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| Track list: 1. Unrelated 2. Best Imitation of Myself 3. Rocky 4. Boxing 5. Julianne - Ben Folds Five 6. Evaporated - Ben Folds Five 7. Alice Childress - Ben Folds Five 8. Barrytown - Ben Folds Five 9. Amelia Bright - Ben Folds Five 10. Tell Me What I Did - Ben Folds Five 11. Rock Star 12. Losing Lisa 13. Break Up at Food Camp 16. Hiro's Song 15. Wandering 16. The Secret Life of Morgan Davis 17. Such Great Heights 18. Bitches Ain't Shit 19. Time 20. Sleazy 21. Because the Origami - 8in8 22. Stumblin' Home Winter Blues - Ben Folds Five Running time: 77 minutes Released: 2011 |
We reach the end of Ben Folds pretending to be himself with a rarities disc. Some of this is likely to be quite bad, other bits are probably gold dust. I don't recall a lot of the specific versions of better known songs here, or indeed many of the others so whilst this disc is one of the reasons I bought The Best Imitation of Myself, it is relatively unexplored compared to the other two.
Again it has been an age since I managed to post anything. I thought that after buying the car I would be freer mentally. Alas between work, ants and being the victim of petty vandalism I have had more on my plate than I would have liked - especially as resolving it has taken much longer than expected. Oh well, Ben to the rescue now.
We open with a really short unfinished piece, then launch into the title track for this collection. I guess this is a late recording - if I had the discs to hand I could check - but its brighter, lighter than the version I am familiar with, adding strings. Its all very... over the top in a sort of manicured way. Precision and propriety is not what Ben Folds does but here things sound too exact, too sculpted. Its interesting but incongruous. Rocky is new on me - in that I have it nowhere else, and I don't know it well enough to have preconceptions. It sounds like Ben Folds Five (eponymous album) era. College rock. Bright, breezy but kinda wistful. I like it. The cadence of the chorus is pleasing, even if the piano is perhaps a little too dominant. The track does feel like it goes on for ever though. It is only 4 and a half minutes, but the two before are short enough that this feels like a lifetime.
Boxing; great song. Said it all before. I am not immediately clear on what makes this version different but I do not have it tagged as Ben Folds Five, so I suspect there are some subtleties in the bass/drums on the band versions that I don't pick up on. There is some harmonisation in the choruses here that is different in a nice way, but the line that stabs me through the heart every time I hear it does not have the same impact in this rendition. Most of these versions are, I will guess now, not quite up to the ones that got published and released. There may be some charm here and there, but generally... something lacking. Julianne seems to back up this view as, whilst being more musical than the final album version, it lacks pace and energy. I might not like the song much, but at least it has some life in other performances. Here it is just flat.
The next song sinks in with its opening chords. Evaporated is a rare thing: a Ben Folds Five track I love to bits that I haven't yet written about on this blog. This feels a little under-produced compared with the version that concludes Whatever and Ever Amen but the song is fundamentally the same, a beautifully constructed tale of sadness and regret. I find myself silently mouthing along with the lyrics out of habit, mind unable to do much else. I haven't listened to this song for a fair while and whilst it is much as I remember, and I remembered that I loved it, I seem to love it more than I remembered. Or maybe it just feels appropriate after a crappy week or two, though I don't think I have much to regret per se. That it then drops into Alice Childress is pretty good sequencing I think, keeping some semblance of continuity in tone and theme. I am so wrapped up in this now, just unable to find words to communicate that. Maybe they will start to flow as we move through, or perhaps not.
Barrytown is another one I do not recognise; it feels raw, unpolished. WMP suggests it is a cover, but I don't know of whom. It does have very "Foldsian" feel to it, the structure of the lines, the exuberance, the rhythms... if it is someone else's song, this certainly has Folds' stamp on it. Weird, the bass sounds muted towards the end. The track has breezed by and it is replaced by another one I don't recognise - one written by drummer Darren Jesse (preceding one penned by bassist Robert Sledge). Amelia Bright is a bit too thin, body-less. There's nothing to not like, but by the same token there really isn't anything to find to applaud either. I worry that the rest of this disc might be like that, but I am hoping that there is a bit more good stuff in here too.
Tell Me What I Did sounds like... well it feels like I have heard this a hundred times before in other Ben Folds Five songs, yet at the same time I cannot name one that would validate that comment. It is a sense not of déjà vu, but déjà entendu. I spent the whole bloody track trying to remember the French for "to hear" and had to look it up in the end. Good job I'm using that education, eh? In my defense it was almost 2 decades ago now.
Rock Star is a song I have always had time for, self-awareness is rare enough in the general population that I don't expect to see it in anyone in the public eye, but Folds has always had that side to him - the same one that produces the self-deprecation of Rocking the Suburbs that is so inherently endearing to me as a Brit. This version of the song fades out weirdly in the middle though, or so it feels, and Folds launches into Losing Lisa. This is a tune I have always liked but this particular version changes the lyrics in a place or two from the released album version and I think the song suffers for it. The arrangement is also slightly softer, leveled differently or something. There is a vim missing, and with it an impact. Still a very nice piece of music though even if it sounds like it was recorded on the tinniest microphone he could find.
We blast through a crappy mall-based dumping song - not really much to recommend in this. It feels 2 decades or more out of date, like it should be on the soundtrack of Kevin Smith's Mallrats. I am astonished to find on a quick Google that this was an outake from The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner rather than earlier. Then I have to adjust the pasted track list below the image as Hiro's Song (boring, sorry) comes before Wandering not the other way around.
Wandering I love. I have this on an EP somewhere that may surface later and I think that is probably the better version but I find this song touching in the extreme. The chorus really gels for me, a plaintive, regretful voice over a wonderfully judged piano, softly melodic, conveying the tone perfectly. Ben Folds has never been the worlds best vocalist, but it is easy to forgive him that when he composes and writes (co-with Darren Jesse here) as well as this. Ah, yeah - thought so. The other version is definitely better. Here the midsection is a little out of kilter with the verses and chorus, the tone shifted by the arrangement. Still, it is very much the same song, and the last lines of the final verse are still a hammer blow.
We get a music-hall (or should that be stupid sitcom credits sequence?) inspired number next, inserted here in what feels like a really inappropriate change of tone. This song could only be American in its composition, even before it gets to the crackpot lyrics. I don't like it at all - its a childish attempt to be funny that just misses the mark for me. Morgan Davis can take his secret life elsewhere.
I own a best-of from The Postal Service (great band name, I think) thanks to this next track, where Folds covers Such Great Heights. The arrangement is not as immediately pleasant as I remembered, and the verses are terse and tenser than I recalled, but the chorus I love. Folds manages to create the same sense of constriction, claustrophobia and edginess through incredible staccato key mashing that the original managed with programmed sequences (though his version gets some of that later), and the song itself carries with it enough that any half-faithful rendition is going to be worth your time.
We stay in covers-land for Bitches Ain't Shit. The song itself is really not up my street at all, though I do remember seeing Folds perform this live, just him and his keys and being amazed by the performance; somehow he manages to sell it as a soft piano ballad. Its remarkable genre-busting work, but yeah... there's nothing admirable about the source material, laden with all the misongyny you would expect from the title. I don't think any less of Folds for covering it - I am pretty sure it is deliberately ironic - but once you have heard it once, the impressiveness of his work with the song is completely overruled by the offensiveness of the lyrics. I won't miss it.
Time comes and goes - not sure what is different about this from the version on Songs for Silverman. I haven't listened to that album for an age, something I should perhaps remedy once my car is drivable again. I like the song, like most of the album, but it doesn't stick in my mind quite as much as others. It is a brief respite before another genre-twist. Sleazy is pretty ....ing bad. I am not familiar at all with the source (unlike Bitches Ain't Shit) and so anything Folds brings in transposing this song is lost on me and I am just left to interpret what I hear in a more literal way. This has none of the class of the other rework, none of the musicality in the result. Its just a sonic mess with nothing to recommend it at all.
Because the Origami is by 8in8; 8in8 is Ben Folds with a couple of others, most notably for me it includes author Neil Gaiman (who inspired another album I have - Where's Neil When You Need Him, which I bought because Thea Gilmore contributed a track). This song is alright but nothing special. I am sensing the end - just this and what I expect to be a nothing-like junk track to go. Stumblin' Home Winter Blues is... yeah. Nothing much to it, or nothing I can see after an hour of other Folds songs anyway. It's another Darren Jesse-penned track, and like Amelia Bright it is pretty-ish but lightweight, nothing to hook on to, nothing to engage with. Its light fare, perfectly listenable but easily forgettable; I wonder if his band Hotel Lights were pretty much that too?
Who knows... not me. I'm done here, slightly trimmer and resolving again to try and make more posts here without such a large gap. We'll see if I manage it.
Again it has been an age since I managed to post anything. I thought that after buying the car I would be freer mentally. Alas between work, ants and being the victim of petty vandalism I have had more on my plate than I would have liked - especially as resolving it has taken much longer than expected. Oh well, Ben to the rescue now.
We open with a really short unfinished piece, then launch into the title track for this collection. I guess this is a late recording - if I had the discs to hand I could check - but its brighter, lighter than the version I am familiar with, adding strings. Its all very... over the top in a sort of manicured way. Precision and propriety is not what Ben Folds does but here things sound too exact, too sculpted. Its interesting but incongruous. Rocky is new on me - in that I have it nowhere else, and I don't know it well enough to have preconceptions. It sounds like Ben Folds Five (eponymous album) era. College rock. Bright, breezy but kinda wistful. I like it. The cadence of the chorus is pleasing, even if the piano is perhaps a little too dominant. The track does feel like it goes on for ever though. It is only 4 and a half minutes, but the two before are short enough that this feels like a lifetime.
Boxing; great song. Said it all before. I am not immediately clear on what makes this version different but I do not have it tagged as Ben Folds Five, so I suspect there are some subtleties in the bass/drums on the band versions that I don't pick up on. There is some harmonisation in the choruses here that is different in a nice way, but the line that stabs me through the heart every time I hear it does not have the same impact in this rendition. Most of these versions are, I will guess now, not quite up to the ones that got published and released. There may be some charm here and there, but generally... something lacking. Julianne seems to back up this view as, whilst being more musical than the final album version, it lacks pace and energy. I might not like the song much, but at least it has some life in other performances. Here it is just flat.
The next song sinks in with its opening chords. Evaporated is a rare thing: a Ben Folds Five track I love to bits that I haven't yet written about on this blog. This feels a little under-produced compared with the version that concludes Whatever and Ever Amen but the song is fundamentally the same, a beautifully constructed tale of sadness and regret. I find myself silently mouthing along with the lyrics out of habit, mind unable to do much else. I haven't listened to this song for a fair while and whilst it is much as I remember, and I remembered that I loved it, I seem to love it more than I remembered. Or maybe it just feels appropriate after a crappy week or two, though I don't think I have much to regret per se. That it then drops into Alice Childress is pretty good sequencing I think, keeping some semblance of continuity in tone and theme. I am so wrapped up in this now, just unable to find words to communicate that. Maybe they will start to flow as we move through, or perhaps not.
Barrytown is another one I do not recognise; it feels raw, unpolished. WMP suggests it is a cover, but I don't know of whom. It does have very "Foldsian" feel to it, the structure of the lines, the exuberance, the rhythms... if it is someone else's song, this certainly has Folds' stamp on it. Weird, the bass sounds muted towards the end. The track has breezed by and it is replaced by another one I don't recognise - one written by drummer Darren Jesse (preceding one penned by bassist Robert Sledge). Amelia Bright is a bit too thin, body-less. There's nothing to not like, but by the same token there really isn't anything to find to applaud either. I worry that the rest of this disc might be like that, but I am hoping that there is a bit more good stuff in here too.
Tell Me What I Did sounds like... well it feels like I have heard this a hundred times before in other Ben Folds Five songs, yet at the same time I cannot name one that would validate that comment. It is a sense not of déjà vu, but déjà entendu. I spent the whole bloody track trying to remember the French for "to hear" and had to look it up in the end. Good job I'm using that education, eh? In my defense it was almost 2 decades ago now.
Rock Star is a song I have always had time for, self-awareness is rare enough in the general population that I don't expect to see it in anyone in the public eye, but Folds has always had that side to him - the same one that produces the self-deprecation of Rocking the Suburbs that is so inherently endearing to me as a Brit. This version of the song fades out weirdly in the middle though, or so it feels, and Folds launches into Losing Lisa. This is a tune I have always liked but this particular version changes the lyrics in a place or two from the released album version and I think the song suffers for it. The arrangement is also slightly softer, leveled differently or something. There is a vim missing, and with it an impact. Still a very nice piece of music though even if it sounds like it was recorded on the tinniest microphone he could find.
We blast through a crappy mall-based dumping song - not really much to recommend in this. It feels 2 decades or more out of date, like it should be on the soundtrack of Kevin Smith's Mallrats. I am astonished to find on a quick Google that this was an outake from The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner rather than earlier. Then I have to adjust the pasted track list below the image as Hiro's Song (boring, sorry) comes before Wandering not the other way around.
Wandering I love. I have this on an EP somewhere that may surface later and I think that is probably the better version but I find this song touching in the extreme. The chorus really gels for me, a plaintive, regretful voice over a wonderfully judged piano, softly melodic, conveying the tone perfectly. Ben Folds has never been the worlds best vocalist, but it is easy to forgive him that when he composes and writes (co-with Darren Jesse here) as well as this. Ah, yeah - thought so. The other version is definitely better. Here the midsection is a little out of kilter with the verses and chorus, the tone shifted by the arrangement. Still, it is very much the same song, and the last lines of the final verse are still a hammer blow.
We get a music-hall (or should that be stupid sitcom credits sequence?) inspired number next, inserted here in what feels like a really inappropriate change of tone. This song could only be American in its composition, even before it gets to the crackpot lyrics. I don't like it at all - its a childish attempt to be funny that just misses the mark for me. Morgan Davis can take his secret life elsewhere.
I own a best-of from The Postal Service (great band name, I think) thanks to this next track, where Folds covers Such Great Heights. The arrangement is not as immediately pleasant as I remembered, and the verses are terse and tenser than I recalled, but the chorus I love. Folds manages to create the same sense of constriction, claustrophobia and edginess through incredible staccato key mashing that the original managed with programmed sequences (though his version gets some of that later), and the song itself carries with it enough that any half-faithful rendition is going to be worth your time.
We stay in covers-land for Bitches Ain't Shit. The song itself is really not up my street at all, though I do remember seeing Folds perform this live, just him and his keys and being amazed by the performance; somehow he manages to sell it as a soft piano ballad. Its remarkable genre-busting work, but yeah... there's nothing admirable about the source material, laden with all the misongyny you would expect from the title. I don't think any less of Folds for covering it - I am pretty sure it is deliberately ironic - but once you have heard it once, the impressiveness of his work with the song is completely overruled by the offensiveness of the lyrics. I won't miss it.
Time comes and goes - not sure what is different about this from the version on Songs for Silverman. I haven't listened to that album for an age, something I should perhaps remedy once my car is drivable again. I like the song, like most of the album, but it doesn't stick in my mind quite as much as others. It is a brief respite before another genre-twist. Sleazy is pretty ....ing bad. I am not familiar at all with the source (unlike Bitches Ain't Shit) and so anything Folds brings in transposing this song is lost on me and I am just left to interpret what I hear in a more literal way. This has none of the class of the other rework, none of the musicality in the result. Its just a sonic mess with nothing to recommend it at all.
Because the Origami is by 8in8; 8in8 is Ben Folds with a couple of others, most notably for me it includes author Neil Gaiman (who inspired another album I have - Where's Neil When You Need Him, which I bought because Thea Gilmore contributed a track). This song is alright but nothing special. I am sensing the end - just this and what I expect to be a nothing-like junk track to go. Stumblin' Home Winter Blues is... yeah. Nothing much to it, or nothing I can see after an hour of other Folds songs anyway. It's another Darren Jesse-penned track, and like Amelia Bright it is pretty-ish but lightweight, nothing to hook on to, nothing to engage with. Its light fare, perfectly listenable but easily forgettable; I wonder if his band Hotel Lights were pretty much that too?
Who knows... not me. I'm done here, slightly trimmer and resolving again to try and make more posts here without such a large gap. We'll see if I manage it.
