BEN FOLDS: SO THERE (2015)
1) Capable Of Anything; 2) Not
A Fan; 3) So There; 4) Long Way To Go; 5) Phone In A Pool; 6) Yes Man; 7)
F10-D-A; 8) I'm Not The Man; 9-11) Concerto For Piano And Orchestra.
Back to solo format, or, more accurately,
orchestral format — Ben Folds' latest project combines his composing, playing,
and singing talents with those of the so-called «yMusic Ensemble» for a total
of eight chamber pop songs, plus a bona fide piano concerto with the Nashville
Symphony, probably not the hottest symphonic orchestra on the planet but a
fairly qualified one, and quite proficient in playing and recording American
composers from Ives and Gershwin all the way to Leonard Bernstein, which is
precisely the tradition, I believe, to which Ben subscribes, combining
old-school academic values with an element of lightweight (sometimes even
slightly tacky) popular entertainment. But we will come back to this a little
later.
Substantially, nothing much has changed since
last we saw Ben Folds as a solo artist: this is still our old friend, the
little nerdy-wimpy everyday life philosopher who is to singer-songwriting what
Jerry Seinfeld is to comedy, and he still writes and sings these light, fragile
pop tunes about broken hearts, hurt feelings, and society pressure that could
be very depressing if only they showed any pressure at all, which they do not.
But the chosen format, where the man completely frees himself from the
conventions of a pop-rock combo, seems to have triggered some hidden reserves
in his spirit, and the eight songs that form the bulk of the record are, on the
whole, his finest effort in quite some time. At the very least, it was much
more delightful to listen to this stuff than either the Ben Folds Five reunion,
or that draggy Nick Hornby collaboration.
These are pop songs, for sure, not baroque
chamber music imitations, and it's not as if the format were anything new
(Fiona Apple? Regina Spektor? Sufjan Stevens?), but somehow Ben gets us exactly
in the right mood with the first thirty seconds of ʽCapable Of Anythingʼ, when
the piano, the violin, and the soft underlying percussion start hopping at a
merry tempo, and an even cuter little woodwind flourish links the bars
together. That's a delicious slice of pop catchiness there, along with hope,
good humor, and just a tiny pinch of melancholia to tone down the extra
sweetness. The arrangement shoots off colors in many directions, with cellos,
trumpets, and occasional explosive sound effects added at will, and ultimately
it seems to not matter much what the man is singing about — in fact, it does
not seem to matter if he's singing at all,
because the vocal hooks are easily the least attractive part of the whole
bouillon.
Another big highlight is the title track, which
starts out with a promising, suspenseful set of violin and cello lines, again
played at a relatively fast tempo — then quickly progresses towards a china cup
thunderstorm of romantic piano and violin waves gently lashing against each
other... and what is the song about?
"I will not forget you / There is nothing to forget". Uhh... okay,
this is another fairly good moment to state how little one could care about Ben
Folds' personal problems as long as he keeps composing decent music, because
those problems don't have to have anything to do with the music. In fact, even without the ambitiousness of the Concerto,
these songs are all about musical experimentation with the chamber orchestra
format — a background against which Ben's «little man issues» seem trite and
insignificant.
This is why the least impressive tracks here
are the slow ballads that place Ben's vocals at the center of attention — ʽNot
A Fanʼ has too much of that just-a-man-and-his-piano aura that made so much of
his solo work so tedious, and, in a way, seems to have been written with the
sole purpose of ad-libbing a barely audible "...so fuck you!" in the
final bar; ʽYes Manʼ has a much more sophisticated vocal melody, but its
multi-tracked vocals ultimately do it a disservice, drawing attention away from
the music and onto the vocals. Much more charming is such a little novelty
number as ʽF10-D-Aʼ — two minutes of a song about writing a song, with Ben
spelling out the various notes of the tune-under-construction as it goes by; it
is charmingly theatrical and also surprisingly efficient (you'd never think
that a wholesome new song can be built like that, but somehow, it is almost a wholesome new song).
The last twenty minutes of the album are given
over to the aforementioned Concerto, and it sounds... cool. It's not great
innovative classical music — it's an experiment in the old-fashioned way,
combining elements of Western classical, jazz, ragtime, vaudeville, and maybe
showing just the tiniest bits of modern influences; for all I know, something
like this could have been written by the likes of Copland as early as the
1920s, but then I don't know that
much about Copland or any other classical American composer, so I don't exactly
feel qualified to judge Ben's work here as a respectable homage or a pathetic
joke. All I know is, all three movements sound interesting, and Ben's piano
playing, wisely not straining for
virtuosity, is constantly varied and engaging (and I am still trying to
understand what exactly it is that he does at the beginning of the third
movement — is that a prepared piano? is he picking at the hammers directly?
whatever). The orchestra seems well engaged in the process, too, although for
such a grand classical opening, the final movement ends in a somewhat
disappointing wisp.
What ultimately wins me over is the humbleness of all this stuff. Symphonic
and chamber arrangements in pop music often — in fact, the more recent, the
more often — tend to come with a lot of pomp and self-aggrandizing, or
extra-musical baggage that makes it all seem twice as deep as it really is (oh
yes, I'm looking at you, Sufjan
Stevens!); here, there is no extra-musical baggage whatsoever, just a guy who
is really interested in wringing out a new set of emotions by combining his
piano pop experience with adventurous combinations of string instruments. Adventurous,
but also strictly traditional — not a move that might bring on wide-scale
critical recognition, but certainly a move that is quite true to the man's
artistic essence. In short, I'm perfectly happy about this, and not even a few
mediocre slow ballads can prevent a thumbs up. Definitely a record that should reserve
itself a nice place in the annals of «chamber pop» history.
This piano concerto pales compared to both Copland and especially to Bernstein. It's rather a second rate Gershwin, who is not considered a first rate classical composer mainly because he wasn't that much of a classical composer at all - which was a plus for him (see the famous Ravel quote).
ReplyDeleteBen Folds mainly produces tripe.
Actually, the review did not even begin to raise the question of whether this piano concerto would be on the same level as Copland or Bernstein; all it did was ask the question of whether the concerto can be seen as a credible tribute. Direct comparisons would be useless - and trite.
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