Back into the Fold

By JOSEPH P. FLOOD

Crimson Staff Writer

For a moment the cheering crowd was quieted. Expecting to see Ben Folds and his touring band take the stage, instead the crowd heard music more suited for a royal procession pouring from the speakers of Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel, a popular Providence club. The sarcastically grandiose music soon gave way to cheesy 60s sitcom music and the lights swirled around the empty stage, before the always awkward and geeky Folds finally appeared to the cheers of a capacity crowd. After last year’s breakup of Ben Folds Five (BFF), the king of angry, indie piano rock is back, touring for Rockin’ The Suburbs, his most intelligent, subtle album to date.

Folds came first came into prominence in 1995 as the pianist, singer and primary songwriter for the ironically named Chapel Hill trio Ben Folds Five. With Darren Jessee on drums and Robert Sledge on bass, the group soon found a niche in the indie-rock scene. Their self-titled debut album betrayed the band’s powerful combination of Folds’s reckless piano playing, angst-ridden, intelligent lyrics and uncanny ability to write addictive hooks. Wading through the cliché-filled waters of lost love, self-loathing and rejection with a raw originality, Folds quickly proved his rare ability to take the uniquely personal experiences of himself and the characters in his songs and turn them into universal themes. With Folds’s manic pounding on the baby grand and Sledge’s prominent bass-playing, BFF quickly became a cult favorite. The highlight of their debut release was the wildly sarcastic “Underground,” a parody of the very underground rock scene they emerged from with lines like: “You been kicked around? / Did life bring you down here? / Everything’s heavy underground / We can be happy / We can be happy / We can be happy underground.”

1997’s Whatever and Ever Amen still had much of the same angry-white boy rock and piano-boogie with songs like “One Angry Dwarf and Two Hundred Solemn Faces” and “Song for the Dumped.” But on their second album, the band began to delve more deeply into themes of loss and inability to cope with life which had only been hinted at in their first album. The more emotional side of the band soon started a chorus of comparisons to other piano rockers like Elton John and Bily Joel, although Folds himself claims to have more similarities with Randy Newman. Songs like “Evaporated,” which Folds fought to keep on the album, showed his ability to transcend the smart-ass energy they began with. The group made their first real foray into popular culture when “Brick,” an understated, painfully personal song about abortion hit the airwaves and sent album sales soaring. Disillusioned by a frenetic touring schedule, the pressures of a hit song, and the disintegration of his second marriage, Folds broke away from his musical path, releasing his first solo album, the fairly outlandish Fear of pop: Vol. 1, featuring a collaboration with William Shatner and a lengthy rap from his eventual third wife, Australian Frally Hynes.

From the first notes of “Narcolepsy,” the first song on The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, BFF’s much-anticipated third release, it was clear that Folds was beginning to move in a different musical direction. Lush instrumentals, epic string arrangements and sweeping synthesizers replaced the fun, hook-filled albums of the past as the band ventured into their most ambitious and adult project. Dealing with death, depression, divorce and emotional numbness, Folds used the character of Messner (who, unbeknownst to Folds was in fact a legendary mountain climber) as a personal foil on the semi-autobiographical album. It was an unapologetic masterpiece, with Folds finally declaring on “Mess” that “I don’t believe in God / So I can’t be saved / All the low things / I’ve learned to be / In this mess I have made.” And it was a record store failure. The album was a far cry from the loud, angry angst of the band’s debut, and certainly not “Brick: Part Two” as so many fans and critics wanted. The band’s most introspective, well-integrated album was met with largely mediocre sales and reviews.

Since the release of Reinhold, BFF had remained largely below radar level before finally breaking up last year. With the release of Folds’s new album, I was nervous. Folds did not use long-time producer Caleb Southern, instead opting for Fuel and Filter producer Ben Grosse. He had dropped two of the finest instumentalists around and was playing almost everything on his own. And the title track to the album, “Rockin’ The Suburbs”, which hit the airwaves early this summer, was a loud, guitar-driven song without a piano note in earshot. However, upon listening my fears were quickly allayed as I heard an album in line with Folds’s progression into a more complex, clever musician.

The end product of Folds’ slow evolution was evident at Lupo’s. He didn’t climb on top of his baby Steinway, nor did he smash the keys with his piano stool. He didn’t play with his toes or dance around stage and didn’t even have a bottle of beer next to him throughout the show. Instead he played his music with passion and intensity, joked with the crowd, and left people feeling as though he had somehow been performing for them.

Folds was backed by a solid band of Chapel Hill buddies: guitarist Snuzz, bassist Millard Powers, and former Sheryl Crow and Dixie Chicks drummer Jim Bogios. The concert began with “Not The Same,” the song with the strongest hook on the new album. “Same” tells the story of a girl who took acid and climbed a tree at a party hosted by (former BFF bassist) Robert Sledge before becoming a charismatic spiritual leader. From there, the band played an entire set of new material. During the show, Folds delivered his new songs with frank sincerity and without compromising of his signature self-deprecating style. He played “Fred Jones Part 2,” the sequel to “Cigarette,” the most surprising song on Whatever, in which a man must stay up all night afraid his drug-addicted wife will accidentally burn down the house with a cigarette. Now Jones is an older man, forced out of his job at a newspaper and left alone in a world where “He’s forgotten but not yet gone.” In, “Zak and Sara,” the heroine foresees the eventual rise of rave music and drugs while listening to her boyfriend play tired, Whitesnake wanna-be riffs on his guitar. And “Rockin’ The Suburbs” serves as the latest parody of the music business. And of course, Folds played the title track of his new album. Following the tradition of “Underground” and “The Battle of Who Could Care Less,” (about the boring stoicism of artsy-slackers), “Rockin’ The Suburbs” pokes fun at the “White-Boy pain” of melodramatic hardcore bands who make millions singing about the trials and tribulations of being “Male, middle-class and white.”

Suburbs does not have the same level of infectious energy as past BFF records, and while Folds is a solid instrumentalist, it seems impossible to replace the skill of his former bandmates. And yet somehow these things almost don’t matter. Folds is now wiser and more mature as a songwriter, and can now acheive with lyrical subtlety what once required the emphasis of roaring vocals and crashing piano. The strongest songs on Suburbs are more autobiographical, able to convey genuine emotion without falling into the trap of sentimentalism.

In concert, the album sounds even better, and solid guitar work from Snuzz (there is almost no guitar on the CD) adds a little of the energy of older Folds songs. Folds played nearly all of the tracks on Suburbs, although the centerpiece “Carrying Cathy,” which recounts the tale of a suicidal woman, was visibly missing from the set.

After a short break, Folds came back out onto the stage by himself for a fairly touching tribute to his bandmates as he played three songs from his BFF days by himself. After the first song, the crowd began to catch on, clapping in time to cover Jessee’s missing drums, humming along in the spots where Sledge’s bass should have been and singing all of the back up “Ooohh-la-lala’s” for “Kate.” The band then came back out for two last songs, finishing with a new version of “Song for the Dumped” (you know the one, with the chorus of “Give me my money back! / Give me my money back, you bitch!”) which included some impressive metal-style guitar shredding by Snuzz. In a time when bubble-gum pop, bad rap-rock crossovers and vapid divas seem to control the airwaves, Ben Folds, thankfully, is back.