The Daily Campus

Issue date: 10/2/08 Section: Focus

Fittingly enough for an artist who has always prided himself on hovering around pop music's fringes, Ben Folds leads listeners to anywhere but what has become the standard for "normal" piano-centered pop on his latest full-length effort "Way to Normal," keeping his wry sense of humor and goofball attitude intact throughout much of the album's 12 tracks.

The album's opener, "Hiroshima (B B B Benny Hit His Head)" is a lively track where Folds recounts a tale of falling off the stage at a show in Japan and getting a concussion. "Hiroshima" carries all the charm and off-beat humor of any of the songs Folds has ever improvised at one of his live shows, from the "oh, oh, oh, ohs" all the way down to the crowd in the track's background, and gets the album off to an entertaining start.

Folds peaks on "Way to Normal" with the first single, the bouncy pop duet with Regina Spektor "You Don't Know Me." Folds told Rolling Stone that Spektor added a lot more to the track than he had anticipated when he originally asked her to contribute to the song, it all of it worked in the track's favor. The interplay between Folds and Spektor weaves perfectly in and out of the intentionally-simple, catchy drum beat and piano/synth combination.

After "You Don't Know Me," Folds does a sharp left turn into his most serious song of the album, "Cologne," a personal song about letting go of a failed relationship. The whole song feels like something from Folds' final album with his orginal trio Ben Folds Five, "The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner." Both "Cologne" and "Kylie From Connecticut," the album's closing track, show Folds can still write pretty, heartfelt piano-driven songs with the best of them, but they stand in great contrast with the rest of the album.

Later tracks "Bitch Went Nuts," "Brainwascht" and Effington" bring back the fun to the album by using brighter melodies and Folds' affinity for comical, irreverent lyrics. "Bitch Went Nuts," a song mocking the typical guy's excuse for why a relationship failed, profanities and all, is arguably the second-best song on the album with its catchy chorus and driving pace.

Folds falters a bit on the album with tracks "The Frown Song," Errant Dog" and "Free Coffee." Each feels as though it was rushed in recording and each falls short of its underlying potential. The experiment of using Altoid cans and a distortion pedal on his piano in "Free Coffee," for example, is interesting, but the whole song feels muted and unbalanced as if Folds was afraid no one would be able to hear his Altoid piano if the other instruments on the track were louder.

At its best, Folds' third full-length studio album since going solo packs more fun tracks than 2005's "Songs for Silverman" and more variety than 2001's "Rockin' the Suburbs." At the same time, however, "Way to Normal" feels, at times, a bit rushed in terms of production and lacks the consistency of its predecessors. It's by no means the definitive Ben Folds album, but nonetheless brings back enough of what Folds fans have grown to love about his music in the first place to be worth a listen.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools