The Clock Comes Down the Stairs - Microdisney

Track list:

1. Horse Overboard
2. Birthday Girl
3. Past
4. Humane
5. Are You Happy
6. Genius
7. Begging Bowl
8. A Friend with a Big Mouth
9. Goodbye It's 1987
10. And
11. Harmony Time
12. Money for Trams
13. Genius
14. 464
15. Goodbye It's 1987
16. Horse Overboard

Running time: 73 minutes
Released: 1985

Microdisney. Genius that I was too young for at the time and which I have since come to adore. My copy of this is a re-issue with bonus tracks - alternate versions. I have the majority of these songs on the Daunt Square to Elsewhere best of anyway, and/or on Big Sleeping House too, but sought out original material for what I was missing. Less than I would have thought, to go by the track list.

This album starts with a trio of tunes I am well acquainted with. Light pop-y tones, spangly little guitars, snappy beats and Cathal Coughlan's vocal... lovely and lyrical, yet far from the sweetness and light you get from tone alone. This is an 80s I could have stomached; the majority of stereotypically 80s fare leaves me cold. Ever since I first heard Microdisney I have felt that the juxtaposition of nice clean and wholesome tunes with such dark and acerbic lyrics was a stroke of genius. Look this way, don't see what we are really doing. Entice with the shallow, reward with depth.

This is comfortable, familiar. Birthday Girl, then Past... the other way around than on Daunt Square, but that's a minor quibble. They both fit squarely into the mould - pop songs with dark centres. Approachable and identifiable, pop-filled with personality. The version of Past here sounds a little muted to my ears, the intro not having quite the same resonance to it that I am used to. Subtle differences in the recording perhaps, or just an artefact of it not being the disc-opener? The tune is just so... nice and enticing, I guess. The lyrics are sad and despairing, threatening, defeatist even but Coughlan's singing is pitched so well as to make it engaging and poignant without making it anything other than an enjoyable pop song at the same time.

Humane is the fourth track, the first that I don't really know (we have another triptych of familiar tunes to follow it). This sounds tinny by comparison to what came before, thinner. The vocal is edgier, less melodic, but just as pointed. The tune is definitely less immediately engaging - in places it sounds flat and repetitive, the workload and heart of the track shifted to the singing. The long bridge with no vocals... no, the long outro as it turns out tries to do something to liven up the accompaniment but frankly it feels a little weak. Perhaps that is just unfamiliarity winning out in the bias stakes because as soon as Are You Happy starts I am back in my comfort zone. I do prefer the lusher background sounds. This song is slower, a stately pace giving lots of space between lines, letting the vocal breathe. It's never been amongst my favourite Mircodisney tunes but I find now that I really like this effect and the lack of sparkle in the tune is apt.

This is becoming a blow-by-blow, if only because my head is emptying as I relax as a result of not being at work. Genius sounds different. I guess that makes sense in that the other version of this tune I have was presumably recorded live - it is on The Peel Sessions. Here it has a sort of stately edge to it, a slower tempo than I associate with the chorus when I hear it in my head. Oh, definite difference... a verse in the middle is pretty much spoken here where it is very definitely sung in the other version. This feels flatter to me, but then we get a nice melodic outro which pulls the whole tune up with its peppy, light touch.

It does not surprise me that Microdisney weren't a big hit at the time, any more than it surprises me that clever songwriters of my era seem to fly under the radar. That said, there are clearly enough pop sensibilities in these tunes that you could see many of them as radio hits - not all of them, by any means; the slower tunes are not for the mass market, but the livelier numbers could have belted out from radio sets all over and not been out of place.

The songs are clever, on-the-nose. The dark anger, acid and indignation are concealed under a veneer of wholesome pop. I imagine that a lot of the lyrics are incredibly pointed - though it is not always clear, through the fog of 30 years passing (and, perhaps, my not being Irish) what they were pointed at. In some cases it is very clear indeed either directly from the lyrics or through documentation of their targets (though my go-to examples are noticeably not from this disc). I find myself looking up and finding a song I really don't recognise playing... Harmony Time and Money for Trams are two tracks that I don't have in other forms, and the former came on just now. It has a different feel to it, faster-paced, skinny guitar, synthetic keys, a rough-and-tumble rhythm. It almost feels like an improvised tune cribbed out at the end of a concert rather than a planned recording. There is something about it that reminds me of For Those of Y'all Who Wear Fanny Packs - a Ben Folds Five tune where the trio were pissing about in the studio, which was released as part of Naked Baby Photos.

Money for Trams was, I guess, the original end point of the album. This has a slow pace and a cop-show edginess. Vocals are spoken with a PA-like effect. It feels like tense movie music. After a bit of a pause in play - things come up even during time off it seems! - I resume and the same repeating bassline meanders along. Coughlan screeches something over the top, a very different tone of voice to the majority of the lyrics here. All in all I think the song is pretty dull, then we are into the bonuses, which a bit of Googling suggests are Peel Session tracks... so I have these elsewhere.

Genius is indeed faster, and better for it. 464 was not on this album; in fact it seems to only have been on the Peel Session - a bonus track then in truth, though one that made the later anthology. I find myself too much in a stupor to offer much on these closing numbers... though when Goodbye It's 1987 starts playing again it hits me that this was not on the Peel Sessions disc I bought so... well. You know - I can't actually compare the two versions on this disc even. I don't specifically recall enough of the first time it came about. I guess I have been stuck in a relaxing reverie. This second version is light-touch and open, soft and... lazy? Lazy in a good sense - like a Sunday afternoon: easy and to be left to wash over you.

I get the feeling I should perhaps kill some of the duplicates but I also don't feel moved to do so. As I stare blankly at the screen, Horse Overboard finishes for the second time, and suddenly I am done. Ho hum.

The Beta Band - The Beta Band

Track list:

1. The Beta Band Rap
2. It's Not Too Beautiful
3. Simple Boy
4. Round The Bend
5. Dance O'er The Border
6. Broken Up a Ding Dong
7. Number 15
8. Smiling
9. The Hard One
10. The Cow's Wrong

Running time: 62 minutes
Released: 1999

The Betas are interesting in that of the four albums I own two are absolute favourites, and two I never listen to. At all. This disc is in the latter category and I struggle to recognise more than the name of any track here. I wonder what I will make of it when forced to pay some attention, instead of being able to skip to something from The Three EPs or Heroes to Zeroes instead.

It opens with a pretty awful cacophony, dull hook, no harmony in the attempted harmonisation. The Beta Band Rap gets better when that all dies down and a more pleasant loop and beat replace the background. The overall impression still isn't great, and the track is more an almalgamation of different mini-tunes than a coherent whole. It is fair to say I do not like this opening and I can only hope that it gets better.

It's Not Too Beautiful is an immediate improvement. A more considered rhythm sets the pattern. Whilst I suspect it will get old over the 8 minute duration, it starts as fairly catchy. The biggest initial improvement is in the vocal, Steve Mason's delivery really working. Alas, the track goes to pot as it apes a Bond theme in structure and leaves me with the feeling that smashing tracks together might be an unwelcome thread through this disc. The more enjoyable structure returns after the experiment filters out, but alas it might be back as a chorus, since it contained the title as a lyric. The track just does not have enough to it to justify its duration and frankly I am bored of it long before it finishes. Technically it doesn't even finish, as I somehow manage to go back to a previous playlist, interrupting this listen momentarily before I skip to Simple Boy.

This track is stripped back some. Vocal and beats with minimal support; it should not work but it manages to by cleaving to something else: brevity. Mason's voice is another one that really works for me, whether on the Beta Band work or his own. His delivery appeals to a degree that allows me to forgive a lot. Alas, so far it is asking too much to forgive most of these tracks. I am stunned at how bad this is when held up against Dry the Rain, Needles in My Eye, Assessment etc. - tracks that pre- and post-date this rubbish. 

Its not that there aren't nice bits and pieces in here. Some of the hooks are very classic Betas and the vocals are generally a beacon of hope in the darkness, but the lack of vision and the impression that someone basically stuck a recording mic on a session of them pissing about during downtime then released it as a produced album is impossible to escape. In that regard it reminds me of the Ben Folds Five track For Those of Y'all Who Wear Fanny Packs from Naked Baby Photos. None of that would be so bad if it wasn't a whole hour in length. I am finding this uncomfortable, I don't like writing so persistently negatively about a group that I am very fond of.

Alas I am struggling to find anything positive in what I am hearing to address that tonal problem. I am seriously considering pausing the playback and breaking this up because it is so uninspired. Fingers crossed that there is something a bit brighter unearthed soon.

As I type that, Broken Up a Ding Dong starts (some confusion as to whether this should be a one-word title, but LastFM says no so it isn't here; source disc was no help at all due to crappy fonts). This tune is a little better. Handclap percussion and funky hooks remind my oddly of Rodrigo y Gabriela which is a pleasant change. Alas I find that it repeats a little too long, and when I say a little, I find myself wishing it stopped at half distance because the hook wore thin and there isn't enough interest brought in to keep the good vibe going. It does change up a little bit in the second half, but ends up sounding like the recording of a carnival crowd, steel drums and whistles to the fore. Ultimately it is another weak track. I have only liked one so far, and that is the 2 minutes of the 62 total runtime. Oh dear.

Another reasonable pattern establishes itself early in Number 15. Alas the album conforms to its own larger pattern of letting it run too long. Thankfully though there is a bit more mitigation here in the form of the chimes and other background sounds - screaming monkeys?! - that are thrown into the mix. Whilst not all of these sounds are nice they do manage to break up the repetition to an extent. Not enough for me to want to keep the track, mind, but it is an improvement of some of what came before in this aspect.

Three tracks to go, I must be nearly home... no, lengthwise I'm about 60% through. Smiling is 8 minutes and uses a vocal sample I am sure I have heard elsewhere... one of the tracks on The Three EPs perhaps? Or maybe its just the style that is very similar and it is a newly recorded chant. This track is less of an offender than many of its predecessors in terms of being annoying. Whilst the munchkin-like aspect to the vocal might grate a little, and the structure is very similar to earlier tracks, this one seems to offend less with its repetition of patterns that are frankly not as interesting as they might be. I don't know if this is because there is a touch more musicality in the crafting of the loops, a bit more depth or what. I am not saying I like the song, but I dislike it less than what has come before, even with its length - I have reached the 6 minute mark and whilst it could do with finishing, it is not overstaying its welcome in the way Broken Up a Ding Dong did so egregiously.

The Hard One is the longest single track on the album at 10 minutes and change. It is, or at least starts, softer than what has been before. Less reliant on percussion. I very much doubt it will last its distance without doing something to annoy me at this point, but it is much more promising than I was expecting before it started. Spacey piano was just getting going when it is replaced with the clip-clop of a return to the reliance on percussive instruments (not surprising given how many of the group were drummers I guess!) in an unwelcome intrusion. The interest lasted about 2 minutes. The whole thing virtually fades out on 4 minutes 30 and rebuilds from nothing. The key loop it starts with could have led to something interesting but it simply repeats for too long and loses interest while some bassy rumbles join, these too fading out in favour of something else. This is just incoherent again, which is more or less exactly what I expected the track to be. Awful. Just as I type that word, the soft piano comes back and the track returns to something like the opening that I rather liked. Alas, but for the 5 minutes in the middle this tune would be redeemable. Oh well.

We end with The Cow's Wrong, which I really hope is a surrealist reference to an animal opinion (quite possibly so given the off-the-wall nature of this disc) rather than a misogynistic declaration. Lyrics refer to cows in fields first, so I hope that answers that one, but it's not conclusive. I am actually finding it hard to follow the lyrics as I try to discern the conclusive answer - the effects applied to Mason's voice combined with the supporting structure make certain words hard to pull out. The song is just dull mind, so I don't feel like I am missing out on much,

As it winds down, I am left to reflect on the waste of an hour. I am stunned by how bad this disc is, especially coming on the heels of the Three EPs. Yeah, there are a couple of really bad tracks on that collection, but there are also several great ones. Here there is one pretty decent 2 minute experiment and an hour of utter tripe. At least they came back from this. Heroes to Zeroes is awesome, so I am hoping that Hot Shots II is not this bad.

The Best Imitation of Myself (Disc 3) - Ben Folds

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.

The Best Imitation of Myself (Disc 2) - Ben Folds

Track list:

1. Julianne - Ben Folds Five
2. Video - Ben Folds Five
3. Song for the Dumped
4. Missing the War - Ben Folds Five
5. Mess - Ben Folds Five
6. Magic - Ben Folds Five
7. Selfless, Cold and Composed
8. Zak and Sara
9. Girl
10. Just Pretend - The Bens
11. Fred Jones, Part 2
12. Careless Whisper (Feat. Rufus Wainwright)
13. All U Can Eat
14. Long Tall Texan
15. Army - Ben Folds Five
16. Battle of Who Could Care Less - Ben Folds Five
17. Kylie from Connecticut
18. Effington
19. Picture Window
20. Sentimental Guy
21. Not the Same

Running time: 79 minutes
Released: 2011

Disc 2 of the Ben Folds retrospective, again featuring solo performances, Ben Folds Five, and a couple of others - The Bens (his collaboration with two other musicians named Ben; I never got into) and a duet with Rufus Wainwright, a definite high point on this disc.

However we start with a rendition of Julianne - one of my least favourite Ben Folds Five numbers when I first heard it, and still so now. This is a disc of live performances, and the song initially benefits from this, but as it gets going it is ultimately still not a very good song. Ben's voice is odd in places on the track too - it feels like a very raw recording, not just live but basic. Thankfully it is also short, and over before I can get too annoyed by it, and Video is a much more pleasant track.

The song does sound different to the album version(s) of it that I have, again a slightly raw and basic edge to the quality, different balance between the parts. The bass is particularly clear which gives the song a strangely rumbling timbre. The album recordings are dominated by the piano (as you might expect) but here those keys are subsumed into the whole rather than tinkling over everything in a domineering fashion. Man, that is an odd sentence, when can a tinkle domineer? In any case, this difference in balance and tone makes it an interesting alternative, and so worth keeping despite duplication of the song.

Not sure I will keep this version of Song for the Dumped though. There is a very tinny edge to the recording, over-driven bass and it also feels like a good performance is ditched in favour of gusto. There are definite differences from other recordings of the song, but it is not a favourite track (I'm sure the younger me loved it for the naughty words and angry sentiment but no more). I am doing this listen now because rain has washed out the cricket for the day - and with it any chance of an England win. Thankfully there was play earlier as I made my way over to Hook Norton to pick up a case of beer, but mostly as an excuse to get out and drive the new car. I would rather be spending this early evening listening to Alistair Cook continue his return to a run of good form, but alas, Folds' songs will have to suffice.

Missing the War is one of my favourite Ben Folds Five tracks (from Whatever and Ever Amen) and this recording does not mess with the formula much. There is some nice harmony, though it also strains at points, and the faithful performance of the album track carries the emotional punch just fine. I do not have much else to add, except that the swell of crowd applause at the end of the track was deserved. Then we dive into Mess and Magic from Reinhold Messner...

They form a sort of heartbreaking couplet, melancholy and loneliness imparted strongly, but beautifully and melodically. Mess loses something of the softness of the piano that I want to say exists on the album version, but the performance is as laden with strings and pain and regret as any. I think the tempo is up in places though, it feels quicker than memory recalls but [retread of old ground]. Magic starts with that perfect piano melody, so good it really shows up the fact that Folds' voice is not the best. This might just be his finest tune, not my favourite, and not his best song, but his best tune. I am incredibly fond of its light yet sombre tone and appreciate the more precise and considered playing that comes with it compared to his more bombastic tunes. The love and friendship that come through, the genuine heartfelt emotion carried in the piece, they completely excuse the use of made up words because it simply doesn't matter what is being said at the end of the day - you get the message from the whole thing anyway.

And just like that we're done with Ben Folds Five for a while, even as the next track is a Five song. Selfless Cold and Composed was always a piano-dominated piece so Folds playing it alone loses very little and, like Magic, it has a wonderful theme to fall back on. Listening to these two songs back to back again now rekindles the wish that I could play like this. I have written before of my lasting affinity for piano music after learning as a teen, and emotionally active melodies trigger the regret of not keeping up with things more than anything else.

Zak and Sara works better than it should, and is a powerful performance, Folds' fingers working overtime drumming out a rhythm as well as the tune, but frankly I don't like the song enough to have two live versions of it on my hard drive. I have barely scratched the surface of this listen yet - not half way in. Despite the paucity of my offerings recently I am half-regretting starting this one because of the length. Stupid, that, since it has nothing to do with what I am listening to, though to be frank Girl is jut shit; to be fair Folds describes it as his "0.6" and suitable for a boy-band. My take is its too crap even for that!

The Bens featured Ben Folds, Ben Kweller (the one I remember) and Ben Lee (the one I always forget). I never knew anything about the other two, and never investigated the output of Ben-to-the-power-3. On the basis of the track here, that was a good decision; its just a dull, repetitive loop of a song with nothing to hold or draw the interest. When it ends, I reckon it is unlikely I will ever listen to them again. Coming on the back of that dullness, a return to a sad and emotional piece is effective. Its funny - I never really appreciated Fred Jones as an album track, but here, and thinking back to my prior experience of this disc, it is a song I really like. I don't know if that is because I can relate, working in an office and would hate to be there or what...

Now we hit the heights. Careless Whisper may be a George Michael number but the song is not to be written off just for that, and here the interplay between Folds and his flamboyant guest is awesome. I have a few Rufus Wainwright albums (though to be honest I kinda wish I'd stopped at two) and like him as a showman. He and Folds have very different voices that play off each other well and whilst the whole performance has more than a touch of camp about it, the song is nailed. 

Ugh, my back is starting to ache; I do not have the ideal posture or position for long stints actively addressing the keyboard like this. I think my coffee table has got away from my couch again. I really need to sort out my spare room so I can get a proper desk set up... not that I would use it, it is too convenient having the laptop in the front room with everything else. A couple of comedic numbers drift by before we head back to the Five for a couple more. Long Tall Texan is half a song really - Folds admitting to the crowd mid number he knows no more of the words. Still.

Army; we've been here before. It's a great song and fantastic live. This version is again different from the live version Folds does solo on Ben Folds Live. I don't just mean the fact that they actually have the horns to do the horn parts rather than relying on the audience; the drums and bass really adding to the ensemble sound, taking up slack. I think I prefer the piano-only, audience participation version (as I have been there, done that audience wise) but I like both. This version of Battle of Who Could Care Less is good too - its uptempo washout cheer is oddly welcome right about now and I somehow daze my way through it, remembering to type this line only as it ends.

Five to go, and it is a bit of a denouement from here. Two songs from Way to Normal first, one I rather like followed by one I could take or leave. There is something very sad about Kylie From Connecticut, the narrative of this song is one of a return to an infidelity in later years - speaking to a loneliness. However what really strikes me about this piece is the fact that this rendition goes bananas in the middle of it, an instrumental insert that seems at odds with the sombre general tone. I think it's not as good as the album version (and I didn't like much from that album as we might see when we eventually get there), but I would need to check before hitting delete. Effington is just... blah - it has some nice bits, it has some awful bits and overall it comes to a pretty dull whole.

Picture Window, on the other hand... this song is a true favourite. Penned by Nick Hornby for Lonely Avenue, it knocks me flat with its chorus. It's a song about the mother of a very sick child, sad and trying not to get hopes up. Hope is a bastard. There is something compelling about that, but oddly (and I would imagine deliberately) genuinely hopeful too. Hope may be a bastard, but its a necessary one and part of being human. Folds nails the tone with his tune, though the playing here sounds a little out compared with the album version in one or two places. Still a great song though.

Sentimental Guy introduces a trumpet which I don't recall being part of the album recording, some harmonies which definitely were (with Weird Al Yankovic if memory serves), and then we hit the last number. An audience-participation version of Not the Same, in place of the choir used on Ben Folds Live. There is, with bass and drums definitely present, more to this recording again than the original version on Rocking the Suburbs, and this is subtly different than the Folds, Piano and choir rendition. I rather like it, at least until the end, where it cuts off very abruptly.

Phew. Just one more post until I can move on to other stuff, though at least disc 3 is more unusual material - and so a little less familiar. I say move on to other stuff... we'll see if I can keep any kind of rhythm up through the other "best of"s, not that many thankfully, and then a Big Box of 6 discs by one artist (who also features in the best ofs). So sameness persists for a while, no doubt contributing to my reticence to find the time. I would like to establish some momentum again, this year has been noticeably slower than last, more gaps and longer gaps between posts. There's not even a shred of hope that I will finish B by the time I have been going a year. I would need to do more than 1 a day as there are 90+ still to go... B is clearly a common first letter for album titles.

The Best Imitation of Myself (Disc 1) - Ben Folds

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.

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.

Ben Folds Live - Ben Folds

Track list:

1. One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces
2. Zak And Sara
3. Silver Street
4. Best Imitation of Myself
5. Not The Same
6. Jane
7. One Down
8. Fred Jones Part 2
9. Brick
10. Narcolepsy
11. Army
12. The Last Polka
13. Tiny Dancer
14. Rock This Bitch
15. Philosophy
16. The Luckiest
17. Emaline

Running time: 71 minutes
Released: 2002

Three in a row; this is probably the best of the three, too. Whilst a trio of Ben Folds (Five) albums in a row is a bit like overkill I cannot be blamed for their album nomenclature issues! Thankfully I have had a few days away from the laptop so it is not quite so repetitive from that perspective.

This album contains songs from the first 3 Ben Folds Five albums as well as some from Folds' first solo effort, Rocking the Suburbs and a couple of oddities. After a brief intro spiel from an announcer Folds launches into things full tilt... it sounds less energetic on this listen than I recall from memory though, which is a disappointment that I will get over.

I am back from the holiday within a holiday, but not yet from the holiday itself. 4 days of travelling around the Peloponnese in the back of a car has my spine all shook up and my body still warming: alas we were not fortunate with the weather after the first day: lots of wind, a little rain, and temperatures more akin to Middlesbrough than the Mediterranean. Ah well; it's Good Friday today and a lazy day of whatever.

Zak and Sara is a little bit of a left field choice for live performance - its not one of his stronger songs, and yet... Stripped of anything except his piano the composition and performance are more easily appreciated than they were on the original recording. Folds' all-action playing style lends itself well to essentially covering the percussion as well as the melody and the rolling rumble of his lower hand is such that you really don't miss it. Next up is Silver Street; this an oddity - a quick Google relates it to a British Asian radio soap of the same name (as a final closer on the termination of the series) but not much about where the song came from. I have always rather liked its whimsy, melancholy and sense of inevitable decline.

I wrote a little about Best Imitation of Myself last time out, and may return to it again because it's the title of Ben Folds' retrospective, a triple-disc album looming on the horizon for these pages, so skipping over it here brings us to Not the Same - context-giving intro and backing choir and all. It has never been a particular favourite of mine. The use of the choir is pretty good and I rather like some of the top hand work in the verses but the constant of the bass chords leave me a little cold. I think I still prefer this over the version on Rocking the Suburbs though. The long outro of choir-backing sets a more relaxed mood, which is maintained by the next track. Jane was always one of my favourites from The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner and its subdued tone and pleasant piano keep it a favourite.

I could have sworn that One Down had an intro chatter giving the context to this throwaway number, but I guess I must be conflating my memory of seeing Folds do it live with the recording on this live album. Talk of quotas, target numbers and wanting out of a contractual arrangement spring to mind - themes strongly echoed by the lyrics. Maybe my brain made up the contextual introduction on its own - the material is all there to lead to that conclusion...

This middle section is really rather maudlin in tone - Fred Jones is sad, Brick is beautiful but heartbreaking, One Down is redolent of being trapped. The occasional audience scream or squeal or applause can be heard during Jones pt 2, and it is completely out of tone for the song they are squealing to. I can only guess that it is related to the appearance of the guest musician but it rather breaks the mood. The intro to Brick starts, stops for Ben to explain the really obvious context, then recommences. This is probably my favourite recording of the song. Melody wandering, repeating in loops as a muted vocal and light bass structure fill in. It is thoroughly touching - very easy to identify with the decisions being made and the toll that can take. The lack of bass and drums allows the piano to fill all the space, and lends weight to the pauses between notes, transitions from chorus to bridge to verse to chorus gain gravitas from the room the notes have.

Outside as it concludes I can hear cats wailing in the wind - not a very pleasant accompaniment. That piles on top of the fact I was woken at 3.30am by a house alarm going off somewhere in the neighbourhood. It can be noisy in this area alright. Looking out the window I find that actually the cats are right outside; two of them facing off... and then they are gone, taking their noise elsewhere as Folds is playing Narcolepsy and my mind has wandered too far from it. The other piece of noteworthy news today is that Richie Benaud has passed away, probably the single most important figure in me somehow turning about from hating cricket to watching or listening avidly and I am torn between concentrating fully on this music which I have listened too regularly for more than a decade and reading tributes. Folds is now training his horn section for Army - an audience participation routine that I have been a part of and one that works where many fall flat.

Army is a rollicking tune, keys never quiet as the bustle and bluster push it through until the point the human-powered "horn section" kick in. Simple chords are added back to them and the audience fade out again for the next verse, before shouting back a line in answer. There is a puerile end to the song where Folds swaps "your mommy" for "the army" but its not enough to spoil the effect, and then he launches into The Last Polka, fingers already warmed up for the key-bashing busy number that in some ways most typifies a Folds performance and just for a second makes me think back to that sheet music and how I might like to be able to play with such verve. Then we are into knock-off Elton territory again with the cover of Tiny Dancer; I have seen video somewhere (did this disc have a bonus DVD? I don't remember) of Folds performing in oversized specs to complete the image. The comparisons have, I guess, dogged him for most of his career. I cannot claim to be familiar enough with Elton John's performances or songs to add to commentary of the similarity or otherwise, but I always liked this particular track (i.e. as Folds does it on this disc) and have maybe heard the original once - and that after I heard this. There is something in the playing here, the strength of the emphasized notes that really hits home.

Oddity, aside, waste of time that I cannot bring myself to get rid of, then into the lead out proper with yet another version of Philosophy - this one containing Misirlou in the outro - and probably my definitive version of the song. Piano only, energy coursing through it, and ended by transitioning into something else. There is percussion achieved (at a guess) by slapping the piano case and strumming the piano strings by hand (I think there must also be a second set of hands involved here but maybe I am underestimating our performer) before settling back into melody and leading out loudly.

I said on Ben Folds Five Live that I thought this was a set of tracks recorded in different halls and then mashed together; on listening I am not so sure I wasn't referencing this incorrectly, thinking instead of the live disc of Imitation. There is a consistency between tracks with carryover of applause etc. that gives me pause, not that that couldn't have been achieved through the mastering. I do not have the hard copy to hand (being on holiday) so I cannot check this, and will surely forget to when I get home. I do not fear such mistakes anyway, happy to recognise the possibility and leave it sitting here. This waffle stops me concentrating too much on the lyrics of The Luckiest which, when heard, tend to make me cringe and feel lonelier than ever. The same can be said of Emaline - a song I did not really like too much on Naked Baby Photos but loved on the second disc of Messner (I didn't get the second disc on my copy of that album, but a friend did...). The live performance adds a lot, and the extra time to round off the rough edges from what was pre-BFF material have left what, for me, is a diamond of a song - beautiful melody and sentiment.

And so now I can move on to someone other than Folds for a short while, this album completed and left entirely intact despite Rock This Bitch really deserving to be let go. It won't be long until Ben (and friends) resurface though, with just 5 things to go before Best Imitation of Myself will make it 6 out of 11 posts dedicated to Mr Folds. A lot of variety in the interim though, with jazz, folk, seminal indie rock and big beat to fit in. One of those 4 is an easy guess but the others are less obvious.

Ben Folds Five - Ben Folds Five

Track list:

1. Jackson Cannery
2. Philosophy
3. Julianne
4. Where's Summer B.?
5. Alice Childress
6. Underground
7. Sports & Wine
8. Uncle Walter
9. Best Imitation of Myself
10. Video
11. The Last Polka
12. Boxing

Running time: 46 minutes
Released: 1995

It was 20 years ago; that's a long time. I still love some of these tracks or at least I think I do. Others I was never that hot on. My entry in to Ben Folds Five was the one album I didn't list from Ben Folds Five Live, Whatever and Ever Amen (and if I remember to link that in 10 years or whatever when I finally reach W, good on me!), and I came to this one probably a few years late. It is rawer and often less interesting than what followed but it still packs that Folds emotional gut-punch in places. I actually have the sheet music for this somewhere - or I did, once upon a time. I tried learning Boxing - I think, it may have been Philosophy - but didn't have the knack.

We open with Jackson Cannery. This recording has immediate energy with the piano chords - an energy diluted by something in the opening of the live album.  At the same time this feels stripped back - not sure how it can be though! - more space left for each of the parts, perhaps by smoothing levels. The bass bridge is particularly clear here, not smothered by piano or distortion, and the top end of Ben's keyboard is much clearer. The outro melody is probably the best bit of the song, mind.

Philosophy takes over. This has always been one of my favourites, one where I relate to the narrative - not of the opening verse reference to male genitalia but the sense of having a grounding force that the outside world may not see or comprehend. I think I prefer the version to come on the next album I'll listen to where it is just Ben and his piano but the essence of the song is the same. Nice piano melody, bit around it, identifiable theme to the lyrics and an energetic denouement that can seem like a bit of a mess. Things get messier though; I never liked Julianne - much more boring musically, much less relatable lyrics - yup, less relatable than a song that references a penis; who drags trash up and down roads anyway?! Add in the simulated (or genuine?) crashing sounds behind it and... ugh. The thing is, I think this version might be better than the one on Naked Baby Photos.

Where's Summer B.? I don't know, but I think this and Alice Childress, which follows, are possibly the most under-rated Folds tracks. I like the wistful questioning tone in the former, and the lament of the latter. The harmonied "aa-aa-aaa-aa"s and "ooo-ooo"s over the piano give it depth that scat doesn't normally manage and the slightly syncopated rhythm, clarity of notes from the keys and the simple melody all combine nicely into a whole that works. I am writing on a lazy Sunday afternoon; Easter Sunday back home but where I am that's next week. I am constantly distracted by movement outside a window in my peripheral vision and I keep looking over to catch glances as my step-mother passes, gardening. After a few days with more planned, today is brief respite before heading out on a 4 day road-trip south - hoping for sun. I digress to not get my emotions hooked up on the sadness of Alice but it doesn't work... the melody, lyrics and, crucially, the pauses catch me off guard and the verse about getting mugged and left with nothing is delivered in a way that I have always felt acutely despite that not really being the darkest part of the song.

It isn't this version of Underground with the effective heckle, but this is its pure form. The intro is a bit off in tone on record, but once the piano kicks in and the song falls into its pattern it is simple and effective. It closes the first half of the album; I find myself aware that basically I prefer BFF when they veer closest to Folds' solo performances, strong on the piano, drums creating structure by definitely subservient to the keys and the bass sparse. Its the old piano bias again.

Two less popular tracks now, the first of which is really a nothing song about (I guess) college jocks which, well... it just there and feels pretty devoid of meaning past uni age (and not being American probably doesn't help). The second, about a rambling and rumbustious elder relative - I'm sure we all know the stereotype - is better in this form than the live rendition in the previous post, but it is still not great. I like that you can almost hear Folds' spit some lines, creating the effect - intentionally I guess, but maybe not - of one of the qualities the song rails against, but that is about all I can say for it other than with its passing we're in to a pretty strong final third.

Best Imitation of Myself - like Philosophy - always struck a chord with me. Presenting something other than myself to the outside world is something that I feel I do a lot, though in the opposite way to the character described in the song. There he puts on a gregarious, flamboyant entertainer perspective to cover quietness; me the quietness wins out and as a result I can sometimes simply shy into corners and not present me at all. Though that quietness is a true face, it presents as the whole face incorrectly. Enough self-debasement though, I have a Video to listen to. It is another tune where the piano has a lot of space to do its stuff, and so predictably I like it a lot. Having learned as a boy and fallen out with the keyboard as a teenager, Folds really made me want to play again - hence acquiring the sheet music - presenting the piano in a way I had not heard it before. I will not pick it up again; I lack the perseverance as well as the talent but I think I will always favour piano music as a result. The versatility is one angle of that - moving from sweet melodies to noisy bassy structure in the blink of an eye, equally at home drawn out with space, or ratcheting up the tempo something chronic and cramming notes in like there is no tomorrow.

This disc ends with Boxing, a track with a story behind it. It's a track that had a lot of personal significance to me too back when I was an undergraduate, 4-5 years after it was released. I can't stand the sport of boxing myself, but you don't need to to empathise with the point of view espoused and there are a couple of lines in particular that always stuck with me as someone prone to introversion and blue moods. The song remains a firm favourite now, though the lines do not quite punch with the same weight.

As mentioned above, I did not get into Ben Folds Five with their debut. However had I heard this before Whatever and Ever Amen then I am sure the latter would have been a release-day purchase for me. Whilst Julianne and Sports & Wine are terrible, and Uncle Walter is take-or-leave, these early songs spoke to the younger me a lot. Time has passed, I have changed, but whilst the messages I take from this material have morphed my appreciation of it has not.

Ben Folds Five Live - Ben Folds Five

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.

Being There - Tord Gustavsen Trio

Track list:

1. At Home
2. Vicar Street
3. Draw Near
4. Blessed Feet
5. Sani
6. Interlude
7. Karmosin
8. Still There
9. Where We Went
10. Cocoon
11. Around You
12. Vesper
13. Wide Open

Running time: 59 minutes
Released: 2007

So I have already confessed an interest in Scandinavian jazz through Esbjörn Svensson Trio - though I did not love 301 much. E.S.T were a gateway which I went through to discover more. Well, I say "discover"; I mean "randomly bought off Amazon and hoped to like".

As you might expect, this approach - and to be fair it is one I have used a lot in different genres over the years - can be a bit hit or miss. I honestly cannot remember which of those categories Gustavsen fell into so I am looking forward to diving into this one and establishing whether this was a master-stroke, a misstep or something in between.

It starts quietly, a solo piano softly opening, a slow lament of a tune, then joined by brushed drums, hints of structure. Bass eventually arrives and the track takes on the form of a jazz piece, albeit a very laid back one. I could lose myself quite happily in the wandering tune though, conjuring pictures of the 40s, black and white of course, whisky in hand. This is a good beginning - despite the potential in this disc, I had to push myself to start the listen; I am running out of days before I go away, and have had a number of things to take up my evenings. A strongly enjoyable opening track then is a shot in the arm to my resolve. It is not a busy piece but it is a very, very nice one. If the whole disc is of the same ilk as At Home then I should think I will listen to this a fair bit more.

Soft sounds seem to be order of the day, nothing overly stated or raising the volume, but Vicar Street has more intent, purpose and pace. Compelling - the percussion and structure more noticeable here, driving the piece along to begin with. Unfortunately the piece loses some of that drive over its length (and it is not a long track) but it is continued encouragement. Most of these pieces are a fairly standard 3.5-6 minutes in length, but there are a couple of surprisingly short numbers listed which promises some interest - a potential shake up.

Piano, bass and drums. It's a good combination and a versatile one. EST, Tord Gustavsen, Ben Folds (Five) and probably more acts in my library that I cannot think of from the top of my head after a long day, a glass of wine and a bleeding impossible episode of Only Connect. What? Don't look at me like that. Just because it crosses out from jazz and ditches the double-bass for an electric bass does not mean that Folds' preferred form is not relevant here. Bottom line, I like piano, and this combination provides all the structure you could want to show it off - whether in laid back Scandinavian jazz or haphazard rocky style. The bass takes the pressure off the pianist, allowing him to concentrate on melody over structure, which makes for both an interesting top end and a solid base over which to show it off.

I am a little disappointed that the first of the two short pieces - which arrive back to back - is not really energetic and changing the overall tone. It's a nice piece, don't get me wrong, but with a slow wandering melody it does not take advantage of its limitations in time. No space to build a theme, a sense of direction; by the time it does it has peaked and is in denouement. Actually the wind down is better than the climb up, and I notice now (blind, me!) that the second short piece is titled Interlude. I could have dashed my own hopes before getting them all up with a bit more attention. Oh well.

The thread of soft - though not distant - sounds is still largely with us. Even when the percussion takes centre stage it is gentle, deadened rather than bright and loud. From the promising start I feel that the album has drifted to a lower ebb. Too slow, too low, too laid back to excite, too relaxed to entice, too mellow to demand more air time. Each piece alone remains nice - well constructed and performed, enjoyable and musical. However they are much of the same ilk, and this is somewhere that I think Svensson was so much stronger in varying tempo, in raising the roof alongside the softer more reflective pieces. For all that I am lamenting the uniformity, Still There is a really gorgeous track. A slow, deliberate trip around one's own living room. It feels intimate, loving, special.

Finally the tempo lifts, and the injection of a little volume stirs me out of reflective stupor. Purpose again - deliberate striving for something, and a darker tone without swamping it with grimness. The difference is the introduction of more bass register keys, conscious wanderings into the left hand's domain, or even just the middle of the keyboard. Where We Went is the outlier that brings definition to everything that came before, providing greater context to what has been and what is to come. Oh, sure, the track slows to a crawl as it concludes, but its job has been done, its race well run, by then. The soaking bucket of active interest emptied over the nodding head that the earlier themes had brought on. The pace does not last into the next track, but the volume remains higher, the sound richer, as the Cocoon is built around me whilst I listen. There are more than shades of Svensson's playing in the latter half of this track for me, but overall the musicianship has been very different from that, emphasising different traits, strengths of the players.

The second half of the disc, then, has had more life than the first; it would be hard to have less and still be enjoyable. There is a stately air about some of it, Vesper in particular. A more measured elegance than the soft sound sculpting of the early tracks. One could also say that it drifts into much more traditional forms as the final track could almost be anyone, a world away from the soft and gentle application on the opener which was like nothing I had heard before. All in all it is a decent disc, although having gone through it in full once I don't think I would want to listen in order again. I did like everything, but I feel it would be better appreciated to sprinkle these in and amongst some livelier fare so I'll keep them with that in mind.