Alternate Title: Confessions of a Reluctant Ben Folds fan.
So There is Ben Fold's best new album in over 10 years.
Some context: I play piano, and any kid who played piano in the late-90s/early-aughts remembers how absolutely everyone insisted that you must therefore like Ben Folds Five, too. I didn't. Part of it was being told that I seemed like a natural Ben Folds fan came off as a rather back-handed compliment--especially since he described himself as "Punk rock for sissies".
Part of it too was when friends tried to get me into him by always playing Whatever and Ever Amen--which holds the dubious distinction of being the only disc of his most people even seem to own, as well as hands-down his weakest album. There, I said it: Whatever and Ever Amen sucks. Opener "One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces" features exactly the sort of immature, petulant nerd-complex that continues to bedevil his personal life to this day (I believe he's now on divorce number 4--i.e. the number when you really gotta start asking "Maybe it's me!"). Also, "Brick" is bland, boring, and overplayed; the fact that everyone just has to point out that it's about an abortion makes me like it even less--especially since it whines about how the abortion effects him, not the poor girl he knocked up. To this day, I skip more tracks on Whatever than any other album--yes, even that crappy Nick Hornby album!
Ah, but I just gave away the fact that I do in fact listen to all his albums, and that quite regularly! For the fact of the matter is this: when Ben Folds is off, he's rather off-putting; but when he's on, oh my, is he ever on!
In one of those memories that only ever seem to happen in your early-20s, I still remember working a construction job in college, commuting an hour between Rexburg and Island Park near Yellowstone; my foreman was a much bigger Indie aficionado than myself, and had just picked up Ben Folds Fives' The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner on-sale at a local library fire-sale, and insisted we give it a listen on the way home. For 40-straight minutes, I sat transfixed; "Narcolepsy" waded me into the waters before plunging me into the depths; "Don't Change Your Plans" warmly welcomed me to the other side; "Mess" sent in the storm; "Magic" was the clear night sky after the storm has cleansed the air; "Hospital Song" forced me to account for how one dies; and then of course "Army" forced me to account for how one lives! The album peaks with "Army"--a stone-cold classic and the band clearly knows it--it's the kind of song you turn to when you're likewise "thinkin' a lot today," and the turmoil in your soul needs something to rock out to.
The album then keeps the hot streak alive with "Your Redneck Past," the haunting voice-mail of "You're Most Valuable Possession," and the even more haunting "Regrets"; if you've ever wondered why I've done so much traveling so young, well, it's because calypso-laden "Regrets" contains the devastating line: "I thought I'd do some traveling/never did..."
I had never heard anything like it before or since, and when the album ended I didn't want it to end. True, this was the album that killed their commercial momentum and precipitated their break-up--but that's just another way of saying it was too good for them or this world. Am I overselling it a bit? Then you clearly haven't listened to it yet.
Reinhold Messner was their 1999 album; Ben Folds then went solo with 2001's Rockin' The Suburbs. These two together mark the artistic high point of Fold's career, in my opinion. It's frankly a shame that Folds went with what is by far the weakest track on the disc as the album title (my goodness man, "Not the Same" was RIGHT THERE!), and if I could travel back to 2001, I would...well, first I would stop 9/11. But after that, I would convince Folds to leave the jokey, whiny title-track off altogether, for it is the one blemish on an otherwise flawless LP.
Opener "Annie Waits" is the most beautiful song ever about your crush waiting for someone else; "Zak and Sara" makes it sound like so much fun to be a psychic no one believes; "Still Fighting It" sounds like you've always known it, like it's always existed, so it's always a shock to learn its from the 21st century; the album's middle-trio of "Losing Lisa," "Carrying Cathy," and "Not the Same" work like gangbusters (which, again, is why it's such a shame for that momentum to be ruined by the title track, as though Folds lost his nerve and had to throw in a novelty song before anyone started to take him seriously as a song writer); and of course the closer "The Luckiest" is his all-time most perfect love song, the one that finally, mercifully, succeeded "Brick" in defining him in the public consciousness.
The one-two punch of Messner and Suburbs is what caused me to finally embrace my destiny and become a Ben Folds fan. I picked up Whatever just to be a completionist, and picked up Ben Folds Fives' self-titled debut too, which is second only to Reinhold Messner in my mind; it just has this refreshing, propulsive energy about it, that even today, 20 years later, is wonderfully bereft of the simpering nerd-rage and sentimentality that would bog down so much of his later releases.
Which is exactly what happened. I would say that on Songs for Silverman (2005), Supersunnyspeedgraphic (2006), Way to Normal (2008), Lonely Avenue (2010), and yes, even The Sound of the Life of the Mind (2012), between a third and half the tracks are genuinely inspired, strong enough to keep me coming back to him...while the rest are utterly skippable. Combine the best tracks off his last decade's worth of work, and I'd say you'd end up with one really solid double-album, as opposed to this long trail of merely so-so LPs trailing in his wake.
Reinhold Messner and Rockin' the Suburbs are still unassailable in my mind, but nevertheless, after realizing one of my favorite artists has been recording to ever-diminishing returns for a decade now, I wondered if maybe it was time to start focusing my energy elsewhere while I was still young.
But then along comes So There, and I'm in love all over again.
It feels like the album that should have followed Rockin' the Suburbs oh so many years ago; in any case, it sounds like the album he's been building up to his entire career. It's the next level, you see, when this consummate musician becomes the classical musician he was always destined to be.
At least on the second half, anyways, wherein he performs the piano concerto he was commissioned to write for the Nashville Symphony. The Concerto is this sort of journey through the 20th century, with shades of Gershwin and Copland and Williams. The first half of the disc sees him joining forces with the chamber-pop ensemble yMusic, for some of his loveliest tunes in a decade. The running violas and flute-runs on the opener "Capable of Anything" immediately sets your soul aflutter. Now, it does threatens to collapse on itself by joining the rather dreary pantheon of Ben Folds break-up songs; but it redeems itself by pointing out that the pump-up phrase "You are capable of anything" means you are capable of great evil as well as great good. (Plus, that opening line "What is this?/It doesn't make much sense/They sing it like a pop song" is just such a delightfully meta-wink). Speaking of self-awareness, "Phone In a Pool" sees him at least acknowledging how much his life is his own fault with "Seems what's good been for the music/Hasn't always been so good for the life."
I could go on, but I shouldn't; going on for too long is perhaps the same mistake Ben Folds has been making all along. The 8-songs he limits himself to on side-A is perhaps an indicator for what he should have been doing for the past 10 years--trimming down to just a select few playful tracks, just enough to keep you satiated yet wanting more. So There is not a return to form; it's a move to a better one.
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