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| Track list: 1. Jackson Cannery 2. Erase Me 3. Selfless, Cold And Composed 4. Uncle Walter 5. Landed 6. Sky High 7. One Chord Blues/Billie's Bounce 8. Do It Anyway/Overture-Heaven on Their Minds 9. Brick 10. Draw A Crowd 11. Narcolepsy 12. Underground 13. Tom and Mary 14. One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces 15. Song for the Dumped Running time: 73 minutes Released: 2013 |
I remember being sad when Ben Folds Five split after The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner. I remember being wowed by House when it appeared on Folds' retrospective The Best Imitation of Myself and happy about the prospect of a reunion. The Sound Of The Life Of The Mind happened and was underwhelming, but I still bought this album when it appeared. I am not sure I ever paid it much attention, though - I have the older albums and Folds' solo material that serve me well.
This starts a run of discs of these guys and their frontman - their eponymous debut is (for some weird reason) listed after the live album, and followed by Ben Folds Live which, like this, is unfortunately not one show captured, but tracks pulled from different performances all over the place. As you might expect from the lists (later links?) above I am familiar with the majority of these tracks from prior recordings. I am surprised, a little, to see Landed appear here but then...
I am writing this in the early evening after a successful and fun day, first shopping then lounging on a beach front drinking retsina and eating too much. I couldn't come straight back and start writing after that, though so I had to watch people pretending to be Japanese first. This seems a touch like an afterthought to that, but at 73 minutes it won't be by the time I reach the end. Jackson Cannery lacks something compared to the other 2 versions I have; I think Naked Baby Photos does it best. When Erase me starts, I wonder if that lack is a result of how it was recorded from the show as this also sounds a little flat. My memories of seeing this trio live are of a vivid, vivacious, raucous performance, characterised by Folds standing upon the lid of his piano encouraging a student crowd to sing along with a song I cannot quite recall for the image. That was the best part of 20 years ago now... this right here and now does not leave me cold, but neither is it particularly floating my boat. There are better songs to come though, so hopefully better performances too.
Ah, that's more like it. The piano melody on Selfless, Cold and Composed always acted as a lightning rod for my goosebumps and it does again here. It's a chillingly good song - typical of the Folds writing that wormed its way into the head of my nerdy teen self and somehow never left. Anger, sadness, regret... it has always felt like Ben Folds - along with a couple others before and since - had a direct line to my emotions and could stir them on demand. This version has typical artefacts of live performance and, to be honest, they do weaken the song for me. Some of the time it approaches discordant, other times it just sounds a mess - but then their style of play lends itself to that. I never thought Ben was the best of musicians, just up there with the best songwriters of his generation.
Uncle Walter, like Jackson Cannery, goes back to their debut - due next on my list - and was a song that I never gelled with but grew to appreciate all the same. Here the "But he's not" spat out with such vehemence that I latched on to in the album version is simply delivered with no feeling and the song is very bland as a result, the outro being the highlight. Here the guys really go for it and that's nice and all, but it's too late. I really hope the performances pick up.
Landed was a song that I latched onto during a bad break-up; it will always have a place in my heart even though somewhere (I forget where) I saw Folds describe it as a phoned in Elton John impersonation - though not in so many words. This was not a Five song but by that point Ben was back to piano, bass and drums so it may as well have been. This delivery is softer than the song is on Songs for Silverman and I think it is the first track that I truly appreciate the versioning of, though I think it weakens in the last verse and chorus. We then enter a triplet of tunes I do not recognise by name. I like the first of them though. Sky High is more laid back than most of Ben Folds Five's output. It is apparently from The Sound Of The Life Of The Mind but neither the name nor the tune are familiar. The next two are more leave than take - pulled in from other places; the first contains some mildly diverting improvisation but is just muddled as a whole and the second derives from Lloyd-Webber (amongst others) which does not predispose me to liking it. I do recognise Do It Anyway when it plays but that does not save it. I am still waiting for a wholesale improvement in the standard of performance.
Goosebumps again; yes it is Brick. Not convinced by the heavy bass here - levels seem wrong, detracting from the melody rather than supporting and building it. It improves in the chorus though. Harrowing subject for a song but the amount of love for this track suggests that the timbre is about right. Serious enough to tackle the subject, but light enough to build a genuinely nice piece of music out of. The lines addressing loneliness touch a nerve and are instantly identifiable-with, even for those of us who have (thankfully) never been through such things, at least in the context here.
One last track from Sound... then 5 more older tracks to go, including a 9 minute version of Narcolepsy which must have something else on the end of it. Unfortunately the Sound track is the one that stuck in my mind as puerile and unbefitting of guys their age - the chorus of Draw a Crowd referring to lewd graffiti. It is no better live and, I think, exemplifies why they probably shouldn't have reformed. Folds - like Regina Spektor, who I compared to him - has always been liable to waver into weirdness and come up with bad material and this typifies the worst excesses. House was the great side of the Five recording together again and Sky High was enjoyable, but Draw a Crowd is probably more emblematic of the reformation output.
Narcolepsy is a hard track to really like. Its structure involves a nice melody being overridden by some very noisy play. It has always worked but it is not immediately appealing. A lot of what redeems it is in the vocal, an oddity for Folds since it has generally been the writing and the energetic playing that made his appeal. The outro/extension starts just after 5 minutes and does not, on the face of it, have anything immediately recognisable appended to it. I was half-expecting Misirlou or Dr Pyser. Instead it seems to be some light jazzy improvisation which I can imagine lapping up had I been in the audience, but on record I have actual jazz musicians using this arrangement of instruments to do it better.
People shouting "Who the fuck are you?" from the crowd in the first lines of Underground is old hat now. It was pretty funny the first time I heard it but a reprise 15+ years later is not clever, mate. Ah well, once the song gets going it's a very serviceable delivery but I cannot shake the feeling that I do not need another one - I have something like 4 different recordings of this track and whilst there are subtle differences it's not that much of a favourite. I cannot remember off the top of my head which version had the original (to me) shout recorded - Naked Baby Photos, I think - but that's the one I'll end up keeping because in that context it's still funny; the recording captures Folds sniggering in response, which makes it.
Getting near to the end of things now and really the majority of the album has been a huge disappointment. I am sceptical about the furious achondroplastic and the serenade for dropped lovers saving it as these songs are second nature and would really need something special to improve on them. To be fair, they really go for 200 Solemn Faces but the recording again has it feeling like it has less life than the original album version or Folds' solo rendition on Ben Folds Live (no Five). The opening to Song for the Dumped is also amped up and this actually might be a keeper because it's got all the energy but a very different sound - edgier bass bringing it a touch of new life. It is slightly strange hearing this song from a band collectively nearing their 50s though, and the use of the B-term is slightly cringeworthy for me now.
It ends in a really annoying manner though - Folds clearly asking the audience if they want one more, but this is the last track on the compiled live disc and the transition from that to silence as it ends is jarring. All in all I am not sold on this selection. I have happy memories of seeing both Ben Folds Five and Folds alone with his piano and I'll take my real, if fading, memories over this hodgepodge of performances. It's a shame, though not unexpected; I had hoped I might find a few stunningly good renditions. Instead I find regurgitated rations, generally not to the level of the other recordings I have to hand.
I am writing this in the early evening after a successful and fun day, first shopping then lounging on a beach front drinking retsina and eating too much. I couldn't come straight back and start writing after that, though so I had to watch people pretending to be Japanese first. This seems a touch like an afterthought to that, but at 73 minutes it won't be by the time I reach the end. Jackson Cannery lacks something compared to the other 2 versions I have; I think Naked Baby Photos does it best. When Erase me starts, I wonder if that lack is a result of how it was recorded from the show as this also sounds a little flat. My memories of seeing this trio live are of a vivid, vivacious, raucous performance, characterised by Folds standing upon the lid of his piano encouraging a student crowd to sing along with a song I cannot quite recall for the image. That was the best part of 20 years ago now... this right here and now does not leave me cold, but neither is it particularly floating my boat. There are better songs to come though, so hopefully better performances too.
Ah, that's more like it. The piano melody on Selfless, Cold and Composed always acted as a lightning rod for my goosebumps and it does again here. It's a chillingly good song - typical of the Folds writing that wormed its way into the head of my nerdy teen self and somehow never left. Anger, sadness, regret... it has always felt like Ben Folds - along with a couple others before and since - had a direct line to my emotions and could stir them on demand. This version has typical artefacts of live performance and, to be honest, they do weaken the song for me. Some of the time it approaches discordant, other times it just sounds a mess - but then their style of play lends itself to that. I never thought Ben was the best of musicians, just up there with the best songwriters of his generation.
Uncle Walter, like Jackson Cannery, goes back to their debut - due next on my list - and was a song that I never gelled with but grew to appreciate all the same. Here the "But he's not" spat out with such vehemence that I latched on to in the album version is simply delivered with no feeling and the song is very bland as a result, the outro being the highlight. Here the guys really go for it and that's nice and all, but it's too late. I really hope the performances pick up.
Landed was a song that I latched onto during a bad break-up; it will always have a place in my heart even though somewhere (I forget where) I saw Folds describe it as a phoned in Elton John impersonation - though not in so many words. This was not a Five song but by that point Ben was back to piano, bass and drums so it may as well have been. This delivery is softer than the song is on Songs for Silverman and I think it is the first track that I truly appreciate the versioning of, though I think it weakens in the last verse and chorus. We then enter a triplet of tunes I do not recognise by name. I like the first of them though. Sky High is more laid back than most of Ben Folds Five's output. It is apparently from The Sound Of The Life Of The Mind but neither the name nor the tune are familiar. The next two are more leave than take - pulled in from other places; the first contains some mildly diverting improvisation but is just muddled as a whole and the second derives from Lloyd-Webber (amongst others) which does not predispose me to liking it. I do recognise Do It Anyway when it plays but that does not save it. I am still waiting for a wholesale improvement in the standard of performance.
Goosebumps again; yes it is Brick. Not convinced by the heavy bass here - levels seem wrong, detracting from the melody rather than supporting and building it. It improves in the chorus though. Harrowing subject for a song but the amount of love for this track suggests that the timbre is about right. Serious enough to tackle the subject, but light enough to build a genuinely nice piece of music out of. The lines addressing loneliness touch a nerve and are instantly identifiable-with, even for those of us who have (thankfully) never been through such things, at least in the context here.
One last track from Sound... then 5 more older tracks to go, including a 9 minute version of Narcolepsy which must have something else on the end of it. Unfortunately the Sound track is the one that stuck in my mind as puerile and unbefitting of guys their age - the chorus of Draw a Crowd referring to lewd graffiti. It is no better live and, I think, exemplifies why they probably shouldn't have reformed. Folds - like Regina Spektor, who I compared to him - has always been liable to waver into weirdness and come up with bad material and this typifies the worst excesses. House was the great side of the Five recording together again and Sky High was enjoyable, but Draw a Crowd is probably more emblematic of the reformation output.
Narcolepsy is a hard track to really like. Its structure involves a nice melody being overridden by some very noisy play. It has always worked but it is not immediately appealing. A lot of what redeems it is in the vocal, an oddity for Folds since it has generally been the writing and the energetic playing that made his appeal. The outro/extension starts just after 5 minutes and does not, on the face of it, have anything immediately recognisable appended to it. I was half-expecting Misirlou or Dr Pyser. Instead it seems to be some light jazzy improvisation which I can imagine lapping up had I been in the audience, but on record I have actual jazz musicians using this arrangement of instruments to do it better.
People shouting "Who the fuck are you?" from the crowd in the first lines of Underground is old hat now. It was pretty funny the first time I heard it but a reprise 15+ years later is not clever, mate. Ah well, once the song gets going it's a very serviceable delivery but I cannot shake the feeling that I do not need another one - I have something like 4 different recordings of this track and whilst there are subtle differences it's not that much of a favourite. I cannot remember off the top of my head which version had the original (to me) shout recorded - Naked Baby Photos, I think - but that's the one I'll end up keeping because in that context it's still funny; the recording captures Folds sniggering in response, which makes it.
Getting near to the end of things now and really the majority of the album has been a huge disappointment. I am sceptical about the furious achondroplastic and the serenade for dropped lovers saving it as these songs are second nature and would really need something special to improve on them. To be fair, they really go for 200 Solemn Faces but the recording again has it feeling like it has less life than the original album version or Folds' solo rendition on Ben Folds Live (no Five). The opening to Song for the Dumped is also amped up and this actually might be a keeper because it's got all the energy but a very different sound - edgier bass bringing it a touch of new life. It is slightly strange hearing this song from a band collectively nearing their 50s though, and the use of the B-term is slightly cringeworthy for me now.
It ends in a really annoying manner though - Folds clearly asking the audience if they want one more, but this is the last track on the compiled live disc and the transition from that to silence as it ends is jarring. All in all I am not sold on this selection. I have happy memories of seeing both Ben Folds Five and Folds alone with his piano and I'll take my real, if fading, memories over this hodgepodge of performances. It's a shame, though not unexpected; I had hoped I might find a few stunningly good renditions. Instead I find regurgitated rations, generally not to the level of the other recordings I have to hand.
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