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Colin

Colin

Colin

Ben Folds
Way To Normal [Epic]
89

It’s Not Unusual?

Ben Folds aims at normal, ends up on his butt in Japan

By Jaan Uhelszki
Ben Folds may have named his third solo disc Way To Normal, but the North Carolina native doesn’t have any such destination in mind. If you listen closely, you can see he's on the highway to hell, or at least to "Effington," his own version of the Truman Show. More movie set than true home, that song—and the entire album—reaffirms the long-suspected idea that Folds is more comfortable on the margins of art, respectability and society, a perpetual outsider reveling in his own eccentricities, from naming his former trio Ben Folds Five to mounting a tour with Ben Lee and Ben Kweller and dubbing it "The Bens" to producing an album for William Shatner to palling around with "Weird" Al Yankovic.

Instead, these 12 songs are more of an anthropological study of aberrant human behavior, idiosyncratic news stories and bizarre chapters of the musician’s own autobiography, all observed with the same unstinting absurdist eye as J.D. Salinger when he penned Nine Stories over 50 years ago. And much like Salinger’s "Uncle Wiggley in Connecticut," Folds' "Kylie From Connecticut" suffers from the same thwarted dreams, disillusionment and frozen acceptance as the highball-drinking heroines in "Wiggley," and the song conveys that same sense of being the prisoner of your own wrong choices.

But this doesn’t seem to be the case for the Folds. Married four times, he seems obsessed with dissecting gender relations on this album, and understanding the physics of love in the bombastic and misogynistic "The *** Went Nuts" and "You Don’t Know Me," his fragile, fractured duet with Regina Spektor. The album’s standout track, the latter delves into a couple's intimacy problems using a he said/she said dynamic, but with a twist. Like those frothy Doris Day and Rock Hudson movies of yore, the song shows how a little bit of mystery works for a relationship. Almost high-concept musical theater, it's both lighthearted and profound, a blast of cold water on your expectations.

Folds returns to the theme on two-song suite "Before Cologne" and "Cologne," but with much different results. It’s a travelogue of a relationship in the last stages of decay, and it exquisitely captures imaginary conversations with an absent lover, and the small claustrophobic details that stay with you as watch your heart breaking. Woven into the middle of the song—like a movie within a movie—is the story of NASA astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak, who drove from Houston to Florida to murder a romantic rival. Folds takes poetic license with some of the details, but still conveys the idea of romantic obsession and addiction.

After spending so much time on heavy subject matter, Folds changes things up and fixates on a runaway dog. While doing nothing to coax back his lover in "Cologne," he's desperate find his pooch in "Errant Dog," which is clearly a stand-in for his lost love. "He's my everything, he means the world to me," he sings. "He's my hopes and dreams, conjugal property. Sometimes I wonder why I put up with his ***, if I could, I would become a ***." Frantic, hysterical and a little unhinged, this seems like a return to some of the comic antics of his albums with Ben Folds Five, capturing the best of what he often does in his shows, but rarely on record.

The same is true of "Hiroshima," the story of Folds falling into the orchestra pit during a concert in Japan. What should be a punch line became an excursion into his psyche, almost like Being John Malkovich, except Folds invites you in, detailing each excruciating detail of his mishap, from the sheer embarrassment to the blood on his keyboards as he continued the show, to his X-Rays. "You want to see what’s in my head, check it out, because I've got pictures of what’s in my head." Done like a homage to Elton John's "Benny and the Jets," the song humanizes the often acerbic, cerebral musician, but more than that, it ends up as an unexpected anthem, complete with the rousing football-chant chorus.

Maybe the tumble in Japan jarred something loose in Folds’ fecund brain. This is the first album where his artistry seems fully realized, both in terms of subject matter and performance. Witty, balanced and high charged, this is Ben Folds at the top of his game.

Click the image below to expand!

Good evening. We are webcasting live at: www.radiohead.tv Mac owners: Please make sure you either have flip4mac or you have VLC installed. PC owners: Please make sure your Windows Media Player is up-to-date or you have VLC installed.

Hello! To celebrate the end of a brilliant tour, we're going to webcast the last show here in America. We'll be playing live in Santa Barbara, at the Bowl. It's one of our favourite places to play; I think we've ended tours there before, once even playing a cover of ' cinnamon girl '. It's not too big, in fact it's very intimate, a small arena with a dirt floor, set in pretty countryside. It should be a special night, for lots of reasons, and we're going to try and share as much of it as we can on the webcast. Nigel, our producer, will be helping out getting it to you, so if it goes wrong....It's live! Thank you so much to everyone who's come and seen us this year; it has truly been the most special and exciting tour for all of us. Webcast details to follow... x Colin

If you've got a mac, download flip4mac for your quicktime player, or download VLC. If you're on windows, make sure your windows media player is working or download VLC.

Pre-order the deluxe album from iTunes: you get "You Don't Know Me" (featuring Regina Spektor) instantly, and when the album delivers on 9/30 you also get 5 videos + the album-only track "Cologne (piano orchestra version)" + the pre-order-only track "*** Went Nutz".

Pre-order the regular version from iTunes: you also get the album-only track "Cologne (piano orchestra version)" + the pre-order-only track "*** Went Nutz". 

Get Ben's new single "You Don't Know Me" (feat. Regina Spektor) now!

iTunes | Rhapsody | Napster | Amazon | Zune

Read the article Why I Leaked It: Ben Folds Comes Clean About His Fake (And Real) New Album, "Way To Normal" at RollingStone.com.

Over the last 15 years, Ben Folds' first-class melodic gifts, irony-laced lyrics, and punk-rock tendency to play piano as if it were a contact sport have earned the North Carolina native a legion of devoted fans of all ages. These people, quite simply, are going to go nuts for Way To Normal. The album, Folds' third solo studio release, is dominated by the kind of irresistible hooks and piano-pounding pandemonium that listeners haven't been treated to since Folds' years with his previous band, the platinum-selling Ben Folds Five. Way to Normal is an exuberant, raucous, and sometimes profane mix of sure-fire crowd-pleasers ("Hiroshima," "*** Went Nuts," and the frenetically fuzzed-out "Dr. Yang"), cheerful snark-fests ("The Frown Song," "Brainwascht"), and thoughtful, moving ballads ("Cologne," "Kylie From Connecticut") that Folds wrote at the end of 2007.

"This new album is really about me being free, which is why it feels cathartic and expressive," Folds says. "It's about me coming back to being myself." (Hence the title.) The album's buoyant mood could also be due to the fact that Folds recorded the majority of it at his own studio near his home in Nashville, with his friends, long-time bassist Jared Reynolds and drummer Sam Smith. "We were just having a good time," Folds says. "This was the most fun I've ever had recording." Here are some of the album's highlights:

"Hiroshima" - "I fell off the stage and landed on my head during a show in Japan," Folds explains. "I had a concussion and got x-rays of my head. I just wanted to recount it literally, because when you are that literal, it can produce a surreal effect. The song is kind of about public failure, or perceived public failure. The video could almost consist of famous shots of important people at their worst moments where everyone's watching."

"The Frown Song" - "That's about nouveau riche, bourgeois motherfuckers who forget how close they are to being the servant," Folds says, acknowledging that it's one of the more sharply acerbic songs on the album. (The lyrics skewer faux New-Age types who gossip about which of their friends is "fucking the guru.") "I've seen so many people like that in spas, fancy shops, and yoga studios," Folds says, "people who don't tip their waitress and walk around bumming out baristas when they're supposed to be in some kind of spiritual place."

"You Don't Know Me" (featuring Regina Spektor) - "One of the things that's not often said in pop songs, or in real life for that matter, is how sad it is to spend significant time with someone and realize that you just don't know each other because the most important things are completely off-limits," Folds says. "That's a failure not many people are happy to admit." Folds recruited singer-songwriter Regina Spektor to sing breathy back-up on the track. "She gave it more life," he says. "I think she's one of the best singers out there, she's just so talented."

"Cologne" - "It's both a love song and a break-up song," says Folds. "The '4-3-2-1' chorus comes out of two people on the phone not wanting to hang up, like when you finally go, 'Okay, we've gotta hang up, we'll count it down, and then we'll both hang up.'" The emotional centerpiece of the album, "Cologne" features imagery that meant something to Folds regardless of how universal he felt it to be, like the reference to former astronaut Lisa Nowak who "put on a pair of diapers and drove 18 hours to kill her boyfriend," as Folds puts it in the song. "That was exactly what was going on in my mind when I wrote it, so I left it in. You do a song a real disservice by going too wide sometimes."

"*** Went Nuts" - "First off, can I just point out that this is the first time I've ever personally written the word '***' into a song?" Folds says. "[Ex-Ben Folds Five drummer] Darren Jessee wrote the 'Give me my money back, you ***' line on [Whatever and Ever Amen's] 'Song for the Dumped' and then we covered Dr. Dre's 'Bitches Ain't ***,' so I've become the '***' guy, which is one reason I didn't want this song on the record." But producer Dennis Herring convinced Folds to keep the track by telling him it was one of the most fun songs on the album. "I agreed and so we're stuck with it," Folds says brightly. "But no one ever 'stabbed a basketball.' That's silly."

Several things keep the mood light on Way To Normal: the sheer musical virtuosity, the joyful melodies, the laugh-out-loud humor, and Folds' heart-breaking tenor voice. "We wanted to keep the smile in the record," Folds says. That job fell to its producer, Herring (Elvis Costello, Modest Mouse, The Hives), who was also tasked with getting Folds to stop stalling and get to work.

"Not only did I need to work with someone who knew more about record-making than I did, which Dennis does, but I really needed someone to just kick me in the ass," Folds says. "Before, we'd play for two hours then I'd decide we should all go get coffee, then come back and sit around and watch YouTube. It was pathetic. So this guy came in and made me work. He didn't want to see an idea rot on the vine, he wanted to see it done."

Folds has been going pretty much non-stop since the 2001 release of his debut solo album Rockin' the Suburbs, which has sold more than half a million copies worldwide. In short order, Folds has released a live album (2002's aptly titled Ben Folds Live) and a pioneering series of three Internet-only digital EP's: Speed Graphic (which topped the Billboard Internet Album, iTunes, and Soundscan Downloadable Tracks charts), Sunny 16, and Super D in 2003-2004; co-wrote and produced William Shatner's 2004 solo album Has Been; released 2005's pensive Songs for Silverman (which featured the Adult Top 40 hit "Landed"); contributed three original songs to the soundtrack for the 2006 film Over the Hedge; and produced a forthcoming solo album by Dresden Dolls frontwoman Amanda Palmer.

In 2006, Folds released Supersunnyspeedgraphic, The LP - a compilation of tracks from the Internet-only EP's and B-sides, including an inspired cover of Dr. Dre's "Bitches Ain't ***," which climbed to No. 71 on the Billboard Hot 100 and has now sold 132,000 digital singles at iTunes. "It's my biggest hit," jokes Folds.

Along the way, there have been numerous tours, including a few with The Bens, a "supergroup" Folds formed with fellow singer-songwriters Ben Kweller and Ben Lee in 2003, as well tours with Rufus Wainwright and Guster in 2004, and John Mayer in 2007. A classically trained percussionist, Folds has also gone back to his roots by performing with various orchestras over the years, including the West Australian Symphony and the Baltimore Symphony in 2005 and the Boston Pops in 2007. In September 2008, Folds will perform with the Nashville Symphony, opening their 2008-2009 season.

Beginning in May 2008, Folds began to give songs from Way To Normal their first public airings as he made the rounds of several outdoor festivals, including the legendary Glastonbury Festival in England and the annual Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Tennessee. His electrifying performance at the latter led one critic to call Folds' performance "pop music at its most satisfying."

"The songs have been getting a great reaction," Folds says. "It makes me look forward to having a new album out there because it's been a while. This feels like a really free period in my life and I'm really enjoying it."

Way to Normal will be released by Epic Records on September 30th, 2008.

Nigel

Jonny

Here are the four winners chosen by Radiohead for the AniBoom In Rainbows Music Video contest:     15 Step V2.0 by Kota Totori, Japan, for the song “15 Step”.     16 Tracks Vs. Videotape 2.0 by Wolfgang Jaiser and Claus Winter, Germany, for the song “Videotape”.     Reckoner V2 by Clement Picon, France, for the song ”Reckoner”.     Transmutation by Tobias Stretch, U.S.A., for the song “Weird Fishes / Arpeggi”. Congratulations to all four winners!