Ben Lee

Photo By: taylor crothers

by A.D. Amorosi

Rock/pop

Ben Lee is all growed up. Makes sense; the guy is 26 years old. He's got a fistful of smartly lyrical albums on the shelves. Still, for most of us Lee will always seem like a little boy. Mostly because he joined Australia's Noise Addict when he was 13 and was declared a prodigy by mentors like Thurston Moore and the Beastie Boys. Despite the depth-diving probity of previous CDs Breathing Tornados and Hey You. Yes You. , Lee's come off like little more than a precocious man-child.

"I'm a strange artist in that people have never known how to treat me," says Lee from Manhattan. "There's always been something that's distilled the focus away from my music — be it my youth, being on the Beasties' label, dating a movie star." So he learned to stop paying attention.

"No matter what I thought about what somebody else thought, it didn't change what I did — it still didn't wind up on the radio." Since then, he says his music has become an adult journey. Hence the spiritually aware, just-be-Ben adventure that is Awake Is the New Sleep (New West). While the albums of his past gave him opportunities to work out the kinks of overthought, overwrought, heaving emotionalism, Awake is far more zealous. Like a kid, he's rippling with bold-faced optimism and playing arduous hard pop (with Philly's McGowan still his stalwart guitarist). "I'm no longer alienated," Lee says of the cheery, holy-rolling, rakish, childish charms of "Whatever It Is" and "Begin." "Now, I'm connected to the world as a working member of society. And once you're no longer alone, there's bliss."

Thu., April 21, 9 p.m., $5, with Har Mar Superstar, The Five Spot, 5 S. Bank St., 215-574-0070, www.thefivespot.com.