2008 Woodie Awards
Back in the Folds
Paul Sorenson - The Daily Iowan
Issue date: 3/4/08 Section: Arts
When Ben Folds took the stage - complete with a probably ironic T-shirt and unkempt hair - I was nervous which Folds we would see. The piano man started out doing what he does best: Billy Joel gone bad, touting angry breakup songs with unusual pop-piano hooks. But when the Ben Folds Five dissolved, and with it most traces of "Song for the Dumped," he gradually got duller and sappier.
Rockin' the Suburbs did it right (see "The Luckiest," "Fred Jones, Part 2"), though I'm convinced that Songs for Silverman exists only because "Landed" - a fine single - needed an album to call home. Folds is a scruffy, bitter Elton John, but was it required that he had to follow that legend into "Candle in the Wind" lameness? When he nearly sold his soul for the cash Over the Hedge gave him for original soundtrack bits, my affection for Folds nearly folded.
Enter his sold-out show in the IMU Main Ballroom on Sunday. This was it: Either he became the badass I dreamt he once was, or he would lead with "Trusted" and I scream for him to give me my money back, that bitch. After a strange opening by Eef Barzelay - a white-suited guitarist who was an interesting performer but not an interesting musician, who beckoned the audience to let him "drink our bathwater" - I was restless.
Then Folds arrived and sat down at his grand piano. What I heard was impassioned and driving, above syrupy darkness but wading in indignation. And perhaps most important of all: It was new.
The tune "Errant Dog" was one of a half-dozen fresh offerings Folds played on Sunday, and it appears he's cut the iffy blah. Middle age - inspiring on Suburbs, boring on Silverman - has finally become angsty again. It's hard to blame Folds for being a bit miffed, seeing that the 41-year-old was just divorced from his third wife (apparently not the charm) in the midst of losing his musical relevance. With his last LP 3 years old, the time had to be now.
Folds said he'd just finished recording four days ago, and he even had the crowd help with sound effects (cheering and clapping) to be mixed into the final album. That song, about Folds' concussion after falling headfirst off the stage in Hiroshima, Japan, will purportedly be the opening track - and if the imagery of blood dripping on the keyboard isn't a gripping comeback, nothing is. "Effington" and "Free Coffee" were solid pieces of modern dissonance, and the only questionable newbie, "Kylie from Connecticut," was saved by an instrumental break - and this was the first time the whole song was played live.
The found-again energy benefited the older stuff too. "Zak and Sara" still had all its flair; "Brick" still held its status as the most depressing song ever. And although rumors of a Folds cover of Dr. Dre's "Bitches Ain't Shit" floated like the holy grail of imitations, I never imagined how perfect it would be - this is suburban America: gangsta rap transformed by a nerdy white guy and cheered on by bros and hipsters alike.
Folds treated us to a hopefully improvised robo-pop synthesizer bit about going to CVS and getting some mystery pills, pounding the chorus "rock this bitch in Iowa City," and by that time we were his. Although his jagged jam session on "Narcolepsy" was at least twice too long, and his encore featured merely one song (albeit was the awesome "One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces"), we were able to forgive him. Ben Folds' softy side is dead: Long live Ben Folds.
E-mail 80 Hours Editor Paul Sorenson at:
paul-sorenson@uiowa.edu
Rockin' the Suburbs did it right (see "The Luckiest," "Fred Jones, Part 2"), though I'm convinced that Songs for Silverman exists only because "Landed" - a fine single - needed an album to call home. Folds is a scruffy, bitter Elton John, but was it required that he had to follow that legend into "Candle in the Wind" lameness? When he nearly sold his soul for the cash Over the Hedge gave him for original soundtrack bits, my affection for Folds nearly folded.
Enter his sold-out show in the IMU Main Ballroom on Sunday. This was it: Either he became the badass I dreamt he once was, or he would lead with "Trusted" and I scream for him to give me my money back, that bitch. After a strange opening by Eef Barzelay - a white-suited guitarist who was an interesting performer but not an interesting musician, who beckoned the audience to let him "drink our bathwater" - I was restless.
Then Folds arrived and sat down at his grand piano. What I heard was impassioned and driving, above syrupy darkness but wading in indignation. And perhaps most important of all: It was new.
The tune "Errant Dog" was one of a half-dozen fresh offerings Folds played on Sunday, and it appears he's cut the iffy blah. Middle age - inspiring on Suburbs, boring on Silverman - has finally become angsty again. It's hard to blame Folds for being a bit miffed, seeing that the 41-year-old was just divorced from his third wife (apparently not the charm) in the midst of losing his musical relevance. With his last LP 3 years old, the time had to be now.
Folds said he'd just finished recording four days ago, and he even had the crowd help with sound effects (cheering and clapping) to be mixed into the final album. That song, about Folds' concussion after falling headfirst off the stage in Hiroshima, Japan, will purportedly be the opening track - and if the imagery of blood dripping on the keyboard isn't a gripping comeback, nothing is. "Effington" and "Free Coffee" were solid pieces of modern dissonance, and the only questionable newbie, "Kylie from Connecticut," was saved by an instrumental break - and this was the first time the whole song was played live.
The found-again energy benefited the older stuff too. "Zak and Sara" still had all its flair; "Brick" still held its status as the most depressing song ever. And although rumors of a Folds cover of Dr. Dre's "Bitches Ain't Shit" floated like the holy grail of imitations, I never imagined how perfect it would be - this is suburban America: gangsta rap transformed by a nerdy white guy and cheered on by bros and hipsters alike.
Folds treated us to a hopefully improvised robo-pop synthesizer bit about going to CVS and getting some mystery pills, pounding the chorus "rock this bitch in Iowa City," and by that time we were his. Although his jagged jam session on "Narcolepsy" was at least twice too long, and his encore featured merely one song (albeit was the awesome "One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces"), we were able to forgive him. Ben Folds' softy side is dead: Long live Ben Folds.
E-mail 80 Hours Editor Paul Sorenson at:
paul-sorenson@uiowa.edu
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