Brendan Benson proves you can have too much of a good thing. There’s no doubting the talent of this Detroit power-popper. He has an impeccable ear for pop hooks and the musicianship to bring them to life. He produces and plays all the instruments on his own records. But competing visions and conflicting tastes are required to stress the vines of pop music, and they are totally absent from Benson’s latest album, “Alternative to Love” (V2).

“Gold Into Straw,” one of the song titles, sums up what happens here. Benson repeatedly takes well-crafted melodies and well-structured songs and overloads them with ideas and musical trickery until they groan – albeit tunefully – under the weight. His voice, like all the instruments on the album, is completely frictionless. But Benson nonetheless manages to make a mess of his aseptic production.

“Spit It Out,” the jaunty first single, sounds like the best Fountains of Wayne song ever recorded – that is until Benson decides to go nuts with a theremin, deconstruct the guitar part, and toy with an alarm clock near the end. This is how pop fanatics show off: by flirting with ugliness. They also show off by staging orgies of prettiness. “The Pledge” is Benson’s attempt to out-Brian-Wilson Brian Wilson and out-Phil-Spector Phil Spector. The mind reels at the task of trying to unpack all the references.

But it’s the title track that finds Benson driven to the brink of madness by his own pop prowess. The song sounds like a tune-spewing robot on the fritz. It begins with a single acoustic strum, then electric guitar, handclaps, bass, and vocals. The needle is already climbing into the red before the drums, oompah-oompah keyboards, sudden key changes, and three or four crisscrossing vocal tracks kick in. As it peaks, you imagine the robot’s head spinning and smoke pouring out of its ears. Listen on good enough headphones and yours will too.

Benson may turn out to be power pop’s answer to Lil Jon: a musical genius who needs collaborators to exercise – and limit – his talent. (Like Benson, Lil Jon’s own albums approach parody.) We’ll find out soon enough. Benson is producing the next Greenhorns record, and has been working with Jack White on a much anticipated joint album. Both should provide plenty of gritty ballast for his helium talents.

***

“Alligator” (XL), the third album from Brooklyn-by-way-if-Cincinnati quintet The National, forges a fresh sound from familiar sources. The rippling finger-picking of Nick Drake, the guitar symphonies of Mogwai, and the pop grandeur of U2 combine to create dynamic, often-gorgeous music.

Against this backdrop, Matt Berninger limns impressionistic tales of love, guilt, and daydream introspection. But the specifics, like the relationships they describe, are always kept at arm’s length. It’s hard to tell whether love is flowering or fading in his songs, whether you’re witnessing reconciliation or breakup.

Maybe both. On “Daughters of the SoHo Riots,” Berninger collapses all the phases of a tumultuous love affair into a few lines: “You must have known I’d do this someday / break my arms around my love / and be forgiven by the time my lover comes.” The lyrics are, by turns, intoxicating and painfully dumb (“come be my waitress and serve me tonight / serve me the sky with a big slice of lemon”). But Berninger is blessed with the sonorous baritone and confident delivery that makes piffle sound profound – a trick Bono has been skating by on for years.

This ambiguous approach serves him especially well on “All the Wine,” on which he seems to be narrating the Polaroids of strangers. “I’m put together beautifully / big wet bottle in my fist / big wet rose in my teeth / I’m a perfect piece of ass … I’m a birthday candle in a circle of black girls / God is on my side cause I’m the child bride.”

The songs are delicate, but balanced and pretty without being precious. “Abel,” the first single, juxtaposes punkish shouting with soft-spoken verses and a bridge that sounds like Modern English’s “Melt With You.” “Secret Meeting” opens with gently burbling guitar and bell-like struck notes. They drop out, then double, drop out, then double. But just when it threatens to become dull, the band starts yelling muffled lines from what sounds like the next room.

Touches like these should earn the National an audience much larger than its current cult following.

Brendan Benson plays the Bowery Ballroom April 15 (6 Delancey Street at Bowery, 212-533-2111).

The National plays Supreme Trading tonight (213 N. 8th Street, between Driggs Avenue and Roebling Street, Williamsburg, 718-599-4224).