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| Track list: 1. Brick (Radio Mix) - Ben Folds Five 2. Annie Waits 3. Philosophy - Ben Folds Five 4. Underground - Ben Folds Five 5. Landed (Strings Version) 6. One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces - Ben Folds Five 7. Don't Change Your Plans - Ben Folds Five 8. The Luckiest 9. Smoke 10. Rockin' the Suburbs 11. Kate - Ben Folds Five 12. Gracie 13. Still Fighting It 14. You Don't Know Me 15. There's Always Someone Cooler Than You 16. Still 17. From Above 18. House - Ben Folds Five Running time: 74 minutes Released: 2011 |
I needn't have worried about overdosing on Ben Folds (Five) as it turned out. Not only have three new purchases sneaked into the gap and extended the distance since I listened to the last little glut, but that is now already a month ago because I have been so unusually busy as to not get down to listening much in the interim. Now, though, we have the three discs of Folds' retrospective, packed with items from the breadth of his career, some phases stronger than others. I forget how they were organised but I think this first disc was the best of, the second disc was live recordings and the third was rarities. There will be some duplicates to cull here but that wont be everything. The disc is notably the only place I have two tracks in particular: the duet with Regina Spektor, You Don't Know Me, and House, which preceded the reformation of Ben Folds Five for The Sound Of The Life Of The Mind and got my psyched for that release. Man, if the album had been even a patch on House it would have been great... alas.
We open with the version of Brick that anyone familiar with Ben Folds Five will know. As much as I love the song, this is not a patch on the solo version on Ben Folds Live and I have this on Whatever and Ever Amen so this one, with the (Radio Mix) tacked on, will go. One might ask why I bought this retrospective given that I own the vast majority of Folds' output and yeah... that's a good question with a couple of answers:
1. Rarities and live performances: There are many items on discs 2 and 3 that I did not have before I got this, and even on this disc there are versions of Landed and Smoke that I don't have anywhere else in addition to the Spektor duet and House mentioned before.
2. I use CDs in the car; I am, for a variety of reasons, still wedded to a physical format and a triple album that takes up the space of one? I'm all over that for the commute.
This disc wanders all over Folds' career. Rather than charting a course from early to late, it jumps around with the second song being the opener from Folds' first solo record, Rocking the Suburbs. I was at uni when that album came out, I remember a friend of mine picking it up on release and we listened to it round at his place. I remember he was pretty scathing about this track, but I always rather iked it. I dunno whether that is because, like a lot of Ben's work, the lyrics touch me on a sensitive nerve or whether I am just more able to enjoy the much more commercially flat composition or what. Anyway, I still rather like it now.
I have somehow managed to make it 3 listens in as many days. OK, so one was only 5 songs, but both Friday's and today's are over an hour long - and with the sundries that come with writing these things up, that equates to 90 minutes plus of attention to squeeze out of a schedule that hasn't permitted much lately. Thankfully this is a quiet weekend, not much going on bar buying a new toy and doing some basic garden care.
Having swooped forward, we drop back to the debut of Ben Folds Five for the next two songs and, to this point, everything I am hearing is getting digitally dropped after I am done. That said, the couplet of Philosophy and Underground - age-old as they are now - are appreciated. The best music stays vital, and whilst these songs have definitely aged (or perhaps it is fairer to say that the recording techniques have aged) and have nothing like the richness you might expect to hear in a modern arrangement and mastering, I suspect their themes and subjects are just as relevant to the youth of today (not that I know any).
We fly forward in time to Songs for Silverman next. Landed is a pastiche of an Elton John song, or at least I think I recall Folds saying so. I love it though. I leant hard on this in dark times past... and I feel like I've written this all before. Yup; this was on Ben Folds Five Live. This particular version has a lush string backing (hence Strings Version, duh!); to be honest I am not entirely sure what it adds because I never hear anything other than the vocal, clinging to the lyric. OK, that's hyperbole - the extra structure does change the dynamic a little - just enough for me to hold onto this.
Five of the first seven here are Ben Folds Five recordings, with only 2 more in the other 11 tracks. It makes me wonder how and why the track list was compiled as it was here, but only in passing as I am not that much of a raging Folds nerd (not quite). Of those 7, only Don't Change Your Plans is from their third (and last pre-split) album. I think it is under-represented in the retrospective as a whole, which is a shame because it was a very mature record, a band at the peak of their powers - with a more sombre and grown up tone. I love this song though, it speaks to a wanderlust I do not feel, and a sense of rootedness that I can relate to but have nothing tangible to attach to. If that sentence makes no sense to you, you are probably smarter than I.
Few songwriters can make me feel so viscerally lonely and vulnerable as Ben Folds, and The Luckiest is right up there with the songs that do. Less so now - I am older, wiser, just as single but far less self-defined by it, but whilst I was young, socially awkward and contemplating long term loneliness this love song sparked a terrible envy, even as I recognised the geeky beauty of it. Now I just think its a nice song, and think "wouldn't it be nice to share it" but then move on quickly. The next track doesn't help with that - Smoke is a bastard of a track, horrible break up agony couched in a lovely melody but the bitterness glares through that at you. This is a BFF track but performed instead by Ben and an orchestral backing. Here the orchestra really does add something - there is a sense of depth to the song that is absent from its original form. Assuming my memory of it is right that is much more stark and here the strings enhance the sorrow, overriding the bitterness a little.
It is a very dramatic change of tone to have the next track as Rocking the Suburbs - a self-deprecating comedy song with (deliberately?) crappy programming and other modern stuff and nonsense that somehow became not just a title track for an album but actually a reasonable track in its own right despite this, and screamed invective in the middle. I think this comes down to the writer's natural knack for catchy, and it helps that even though it is a comedic approach it is purely self-focused. We Brits like humble folks, so self-deprecation always plays well with us - much more so than standing big and proud shouting "look at me I'm great" - even if we think the person is great.
Ah Kate. This was, I am sure, the song that got me into Ben Folds Five as a teenager. I have vague memories of stupidly shuffling around the living room to this breezy number, taping it off the radio and so forth. I am not sure it holds up as well as most of their output, perhaps because it is more inextricably linked with being young and I am no longer that. It is still a pleasant tune though - Folds only started failing to deliver those with Way to Normal really, and even then there are some decent songs to balance out the dross. It is hard to really pick favourites though, in a way that I don't find with other artists. King Creosote and Thea Gilmore are two more artists that have touched me deeply at various points, but there I am easily able to point to favourite songs. With Ben Folds it is more dependent on my own mood as to which of his numbers I prefer. Incidentally Gilmore just released Ghosts & Graffiti which features KC on one track; that's a pairing I was stoked for initially, then less so when I realised which track (it is, again, kinda a retrospective) - its an aside from this post, but I am closing in on the point where I stop following Thea Gilmore as the last few releases have been drifting away from my musically, alas. At one point a Gilmore/Folds collaboration was my dream duet.
Back on track, after a version of Still Fighting It that I think might be different from the album version (have to check that and remove one later if not, I guess) its time for You Don't Know Me. This is just geeky joy for me. Ben Folds and Regina Spektor on the same record, personalities bumping off each other and sparking a really natural-feeling interplay. The quirky staccato structure really works for this too, bouncing around nicely. It makes for an incredibly catchy number, and there is also something intimate about Spektor's delivery in places, almost whispered. Perfect pairings like this can often be disappointing when they occur - see the previous paragraph! - but this one really works for me, and makes me wish there was more.
We open with the version of Brick that anyone familiar with Ben Folds Five will know. As much as I love the song, this is not a patch on the solo version on Ben Folds Live and I have this on Whatever and Ever Amen so this one, with the (Radio Mix) tacked on, will go. One might ask why I bought this retrospective given that I own the vast majority of Folds' output and yeah... that's a good question with a couple of answers:
1. Rarities and live performances: There are many items on discs 2 and 3 that I did not have before I got this, and even on this disc there are versions of Landed and Smoke that I don't have anywhere else in addition to the Spektor duet and House mentioned before.
2. I use CDs in the car; I am, for a variety of reasons, still wedded to a physical format and a triple album that takes up the space of one? I'm all over that for the commute.
This disc wanders all over Folds' career. Rather than charting a course from early to late, it jumps around with the second song being the opener from Folds' first solo record, Rocking the Suburbs. I was at uni when that album came out, I remember a friend of mine picking it up on release and we listened to it round at his place. I remember he was pretty scathing about this track, but I always rather iked it. I dunno whether that is because, like a lot of Ben's work, the lyrics touch me on a sensitive nerve or whether I am just more able to enjoy the much more commercially flat composition or what. Anyway, I still rather like it now.
I have somehow managed to make it 3 listens in as many days. OK, so one was only 5 songs, but both Friday's and today's are over an hour long - and with the sundries that come with writing these things up, that equates to 90 minutes plus of attention to squeeze out of a schedule that hasn't permitted much lately. Thankfully this is a quiet weekend, not much going on bar buying a new toy and doing some basic garden care.
Having swooped forward, we drop back to the debut of Ben Folds Five for the next two songs and, to this point, everything I am hearing is getting digitally dropped after I am done. That said, the couplet of Philosophy and Underground - age-old as they are now - are appreciated. The best music stays vital, and whilst these songs have definitely aged (or perhaps it is fairer to say that the recording techniques have aged) and have nothing like the richness you might expect to hear in a modern arrangement and mastering, I suspect their themes and subjects are just as relevant to the youth of today (not that I know any).
We fly forward in time to Songs for Silverman next. Landed is a pastiche of an Elton John song, or at least I think I recall Folds saying so. I love it though. I leant hard on this in dark times past... and I feel like I've written this all before. Yup; this was on Ben Folds Five Live. This particular version has a lush string backing (hence Strings Version, duh!); to be honest I am not entirely sure what it adds because I never hear anything other than the vocal, clinging to the lyric. OK, that's hyperbole - the extra structure does change the dynamic a little - just enough for me to hold onto this.
Five of the first seven here are Ben Folds Five recordings, with only 2 more in the other 11 tracks. It makes me wonder how and why the track list was compiled as it was here, but only in passing as I am not that much of a raging Folds nerd (not quite). Of those 7, only Don't Change Your Plans is from their third (and last pre-split) album. I think it is under-represented in the retrospective as a whole, which is a shame because it was a very mature record, a band at the peak of their powers - with a more sombre and grown up tone. I love this song though, it speaks to a wanderlust I do not feel, and a sense of rootedness that I can relate to but have nothing tangible to attach to. If that sentence makes no sense to you, you are probably smarter than I.
Few songwriters can make me feel so viscerally lonely and vulnerable as Ben Folds, and The Luckiest is right up there with the songs that do. Less so now - I am older, wiser, just as single but far less self-defined by it, but whilst I was young, socially awkward and contemplating long term loneliness this love song sparked a terrible envy, even as I recognised the geeky beauty of it. Now I just think its a nice song, and think "wouldn't it be nice to share it" but then move on quickly. The next track doesn't help with that - Smoke is a bastard of a track, horrible break up agony couched in a lovely melody but the bitterness glares through that at you. This is a BFF track but performed instead by Ben and an orchestral backing. Here the orchestra really does add something - there is a sense of depth to the song that is absent from its original form. Assuming my memory of it is right that is much more stark and here the strings enhance the sorrow, overriding the bitterness a little.
It is a very dramatic change of tone to have the next track as Rocking the Suburbs - a self-deprecating comedy song with (deliberately?) crappy programming and other modern stuff and nonsense that somehow became not just a title track for an album but actually a reasonable track in its own right despite this, and screamed invective in the middle. I think this comes down to the writer's natural knack for catchy, and it helps that even though it is a comedic approach it is purely self-focused. We Brits like humble folks, so self-deprecation always plays well with us - much more so than standing big and proud shouting "look at me I'm great" - even if we think the person is great.
Ah Kate. This was, I am sure, the song that got me into Ben Folds Five as a teenager. I have vague memories of stupidly shuffling around the living room to this breezy number, taping it off the radio and so forth. I am not sure it holds up as well as most of their output, perhaps because it is more inextricably linked with being young and I am no longer that. It is still a pleasant tune though - Folds only started failing to deliver those with Way to Normal really, and even then there are some decent songs to balance out the dross. It is hard to really pick favourites though, in a way that I don't find with other artists. King Creosote and Thea Gilmore are two more artists that have touched me deeply at various points, but there I am easily able to point to favourite songs. With Ben Folds it is more dependent on my own mood as to which of his numbers I prefer. Incidentally Gilmore just released Ghosts & Graffiti which features KC on one track; that's a pairing I was stoked for initially, then less so when I realised which track (it is, again, kinda a retrospective) - its an aside from this post, but I am closing in on the point where I stop following Thea Gilmore as the last few releases have been drifting away from my musically, alas. At one point a Gilmore/Folds collaboration was my dream duet.
Back on track, after a version of Still Fighting It that I think might be different from the album version (have to check that and remove one later if not, I guess) its time for You Don't Know Me. This is just geeky joy for me. Ben Folds and Regina Spektor on the same record, personalities bumping off each other and sparking a really natural-feeling interplay. The quirky staccato structure really works for this too, bouncing around nicely. It makes for an incredibly catchy number, and there is also something intimate about Spektor's delivery in places, almost whispered. Perfect pairings like this can often be disappointing when they occur - see the previous paragraph! - but this one really works for me, and makes me wish there was more.
Still is the one track on this disc that I am not really familiar with, whilst I do apparently have another copy of it the name means nothing. However it is familiar when it starts, a haunting solo piano, a slow number. Strings are added later, creating more of a sad and wistful air which is quickly whisked away by the opening of From Above. This is high tempo, from Folds' collaboration with author Nick Hornby of About a Boy/High Fidelity etc. fame. Hornby is a big Folds fan and cited one of Ben Folds Fives numbers in 31 Songs, which I have read, though I cannot recall which song it was off the top of my head. At some point he connected with Ben, and ended up penning an album's worth of songs which Folds then arranged and recorded. The resulting LP - Lonely Avenue - is pretty good. From Above is not the best song from it (that is Picture Window in my book) but it is an enjoyable romp.
We arrive at House. This is a really strong song. The chorus is Ben Folds Five at their absolute best, emotion, structure melody, and power. When they really get into it they produce a whole heap of sound. It feels much less impactful listening now that when I first heard the song in 2011 and it hammered in to me - but I think that is to do with my speaker, the relative volume and no longer having the excitement of a potential Five reformation. Hearing this new recording back then was a promise of awesomeness - one that ultimately I feel the band did not deliver on. Now I listen to it and it is just a pretty decent song; it has lost something intangible, something I brought to it.
So what's left after this runthrough? Landed, Smoke, Still Fighting It, You Don't Know Me, Still and House. 6 of 18; I've checked Still and Still Fighting It against the other versions I have and they are different (Still is 5 minutes shorter here for a start!) so will stay.
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