Ben Folds Five by Ben Folds Five (Ben Folds Five - Ben Folds Five)

Member Name: Lichfield1979

Product:	Ben Folds Five - Ben Folds Five
Date:	06/09/08 (86 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The song writing and the musicianship.

Disadvantages: A couple of tracks may be skippable.

"Ben Folds Five" by Ben Folds Five (1995)

Folds characterises his music as "Punk rock for sissies" and my copy of the album has a sticker on the front that says "The best thing to come out of America since Star Wars." It might appeal to fans of Elton John and Todd Rundgren and Randy Newman who are open to a more raucous sound. Most people would probably be unable to tell that there are no guitars to be found anywhere on the record.

For the uninitiated, the gag is there are just three of them:

Ben Folds: Piano
Robert Sledge: Bass
Darren Jessee: Drums

One - Jackson Cannery

This sets the tone for the whole record and establishes that somehow Folds has figured out how to play the piano like a guitar. The bass is fuzzy and fills out the sound noisily and the percussion sets a fast beat. It honestly does sound like there must be five people in the band. Folds sounds whimsically earnest and sings his lively but impenetrable lyrics in a throaty falsetto. "Big brother got the keys and I got Jackson Cannery." I'm just guessing, but I think "big brother" has overthrown "mother nature", so now this guy's inheritance is to go and work in the factory, and he's cracking up.

Two - Philosophy

This one has a majestic sweep musically that's slightly at odds with the rock and roll style as the piano twinkles everywhere it wants to and the dirty bass grizzles. The harmonies are subversive and the words are fun but well grounded. There's plenty of energy and rhythm. "Yeah I'm crazy but I get the job done." One of the standout tracks, although there are many. The lyric is ostensibly about an architect that's building something to last, but it also seems to be a metaphor for sex.

Three - Julianne

This has a really gruff and kinetic feel to the music. Ben has a one-night-stand with a girl who looks like Axl Rose. His friend admonishes him but he can only feel guilty for not feeling guilty for ditching the girl. There's a wonderfully unfinished rhyming couplet: "I'll sing a song yeah and it won't be the blues / 'cause I don't miss Julianne." Hint: think of The Sound of Music.

Four - Where's Summer B?

Summery with a strong and confident beat of bass and piano chords and a little bit of distortion rumbling beneath the rolling piano licks and backing harmonies. The lyrics relate what's been happening with a bunch of friends. "Nothing changes ever changes / doesn't feel the same these days." Ben wants to know why Summer didn't stick around and where she's been. Full of the busy little feelings of doubt that mark the assurance that life goes on as he reflects what might happen and what has gone on. He also seems to be gradually figuring out that one of his friends is being cheated on.

Five - Alice Childress

Gorgeous piano ballad with a great melody and a tinge of sadness filtered through optimism. The structure and dynamics of the arrangement are impeccable. It sounds like a song about lost love although interviews suggest Folds' primary meaning is more oblique than that. The lyrics are fantastic. If I was really pushed to parse them I'd say they're about integrity. "Alice, the world is full of ugly things / that you can't change / pretend it's not that way." A great vocal performance too.

Six - Underground

The introduction is practically a comedy skit with a Greek chorus of Christmas ghosts rattling their chains at the memories of school days past. Or something. Then the song bounces into tight and brightly cheerful life as these formerly uncool kids revel in the tongue and cheek "underground" party scene. The lyrics mock pretty much everybody and everything in the most friendly manner possible. "I love to mix in circles, cliques and social coteries / Hand me my nose ring". There are some great piano riffs and the song finishes with a jazzy outro. The backing vocals are simply demented. The most well known song on the record, it fondly skewers the band's hipster pretensions with considerable glee.

Seven - Sports & Wine

This track has some wonderful passages of piano solo and an enjoyably quick tempo but the backing vocals aren't quite as cleverly worked out as they are elsewhere and the theme of the words feels a bit like a retread of the last song only transferred from the post-college indie scene to the dinner party circuit. Once again it finishes with a jazz arrangement, with the drumming particularly prominent this time. "Oh my, we're all impressed how sensitive you are".

Eight - Uncle Walter

To be honest this song sounds an awful lot like Sports & Wine to me so the two sit well together in the track sequencing. Perhaps they could have been conflated into a single song. I think I prefer this one out of the two. The music rather hurries along and perhaps isn't as charmingly constructed as some of the others although the song always remains entertaining. The lyrics are a little scattershot. Uncle Walter is "the voice of fifty years experience" that nobody wants to talk to at a party.

Nine - Best Imitation of Myself

A piano ballad that can't find the same glorious heights as Alice Childress and unexpectedly sounds a bit like a Meat Loaf song in a couple of places as it strays into musical theatre. The lyrics are about how we sometimes try and be who other people think we are but fool only ourselves if we avoid self-definition. "Yes it's uncanny to see / You'd really think it was me".

Ten - Video

The song seems to mourn how technology is stripping life of its meaning and wonders if "naturally selection has weeded" out humour. Folds rolls his eyes at the day when "I'll be stone-faced and pale / you'll pout in stereo" either in a music video or perhaps just in a family album. In fact, perhaps the whole world is becoming two dimensional, and doors and curtains seem to exist in contrast to the volume control of the TV screen. The last verse sounds particularly fatalistic in that "old friends sort of die or just turn into whatever must've been inside them and whatever all of us had then in common grew up and left home we don't think that way no more." Except he's counting the days down until whatever's inside him is inside the TV screen and its time for somebody to turn the volume down. I think the song is about how change is inevitable and people should look outside instead of inside, if they want to be thrilled about what they've got instead of miserable about what they lost. The piano tumbles all over the rhythm section in between the plaintive verses.

Eleven - The Last Polka

A busily enthusiastic polka with some mournfully quiet interludes as the lyric evokes a troubled romance: "You've been pushing me like I was a sore tooth". The piano comes in exuberant rolls with lively drumming and the vocal has an ongoing fragility amidst the noise as it looks for space to think.

Twelve - Boxing

The trio are joined by violin, viola and cello for the quietest song on the record and it sounds like we've arrived in a moment of stormy peacefulness as an aging boxer marvels at the elegance of how his dreams have outfought him. "I take a good swing at all my dreams. They pivot and slip. I drop my fists and they're back, laughing". The whole song is being sung out of frame to somebody called Howard, and he asks: "Has boxing been good to you?" Perhaps we're listening to Howard Cosell and Muhammad Ali ("They seem to think I'm made of clay") but really it's a metaphor for all of us: "Well sometimes I punch myself as hard as I can". Whoever found a guy called Chris Eubank to play the cello on this song has a wicked sense of humour.

Summary: A great debut album which they surpassed with their next one.