The Ben Folds Bastard Effect

1 solemn face.

After a week of having my ears assailed by monstrous amounts of compression (and not for the first time), I thought a sonic palate-cleanser would be in order.

You see, when I review a record for Heavy Soil, I listen to it a lot. I listen to it on my iPod – on trains and pavements and (occasionally) in my workplace, in a vain attempt to insulate myself from the hubbub of competing telephone conversations in a too-small office. I listen to it hoofing out of my Denon stereo. And, best of all, I listen to it on ludicrously (to some) expensive headphones, lying in bed, the only illumination the cyan of my alarm-clock radio (which, incidentally, has FUCKING STOPPED WORKING AFTER ONLY 6 MONTHS.)

... And, by the time I come to write the review, my spongey brain is sopping. Pretty much saturated with the music in question. Sometimes, it's like being saturated with Champagne. Others, like being saturated with less pleasant liquid.

And perhaps that's why the posts on Heavy Soil always end up so goddamn long. Because I'm trying to wring my brain dry of all that music.

Sometimes, I almost hate writing reviews. I know: weep for me.

Why in the name of Beelzebub are you telling me all this?

Fair question. I suppose in an attempt to convey the degree to which posting an album review on Heavy Soil is like bursting from a dank and fetid tunnel into glorious, airy, sunlit countryside. All of a sudden, I am free to listen to whatever I like.

And what I liked was this:

Download an mp3 of One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces by Ben Folds Five

Ah – Mr Folds ...

You may remember that Heavy Soil was no admirer of Ben Folds' latest solo album, the childishly narcissistic and spitefully misogynous Way To Normal.

It was, therefore, a palate cleanser in more ways than one to return to Whatever & Ever Amen – released in 1997, back when Ben Folds was still plural. 'One Angry Dwarf' is definitely one of my favourite songs on the album (alongside the fantastic 'Kate') – and what an album opener. It grabs, dear reader, it grabs. It holds. It shakes.

It's also refreshingly unproduced. The album was recorded in a house rented by Folds, and is free of studio-induced ubercompression and innumerable overdubs.

Anyhow, it got me thinking

Specifically, thinking about musicians' perceived personality. You see, before listening to Way To Normal, I'd tended to assume that Ben Folds was a pretty decent sort of chap. Perhaps a touch irritating at times – but extremely likable. Way To Normal radically changed that perception. It left me thinking that, actually, Mr Folds might just be a bit of a twat. And an unpleasant one, at that.

And, since then, I haven't fancied listening to Ben Folds (Five) once. Until now. So that's 9-10 months of abstinence from a band/artist to which I'd previous listened frequently.

That's a pretty considerable effect.

I can't imagine that an album that was simply bad would've had this kind of effect. Sure, there'd've been disappointment; maybe a touch of disillusionment, were the artist in question to be one I'd hallowed as reliable. But not wholesale avoidance.

It seems pretty clear, then, that there's a degree to which my liking for an artist is connected to my conception of his or her personality.

I don't actually think this should be the case, from the perspective of critical integrity. It's my view that one should review product, not producer. But I'm pretty sure it is the case, nevertheless.

I should add: this doesn't mean that I must like an artist's personality before liking their music. There're plenty of musicians whom I either know or suspect to suffer from various character flaws, and this doesn't necessarily affect my opinion of their music.

Instead, it seems to have something to do with betrayal. Because I'd previously extrapolated a personality for Ben Folds on the evidence of his work pre-Way To Normal, the sudden revelation of misanthropic-Folds was deeply disconcerting and repellent.

Whereas if I'd thought from the beginning that the guy was a bastard, I reckon I'd just have thought, 'That was a pretty crap album' and had done with it.

What do you reckon, then, soilers? Am I a weirdo? Or have you experienced similar feelings yourselves? Oh com[m]e[nt], all ye faithful.

Ben Folds, Way To Normal: enormous disappointment

Ben Folds has lost his ear

Not a single song on Way To Normal, released yesterday (in the UK; today in the states) is truly memorable. Not a single chorus could I convincingly sing back to you, right now.

Opener 'Hiroshima (B B B Benny Hit His Head)' establishes a pattern: it's well-produced, along interesting lines: studio-recorded parts are combined with live crowd sounds and suchlike. But, melodically, it's an emasculated 'Zak and Sara'. The hooks are stunted and malformed. And the humour - normally a strength of BF - is weak. The spoken outro is cringe-inducing.

Buoyant 'Dr Yang' continues this (practically album-wide) trend by which production techniques (this album is inventively, cleverly and extremely skillfully produced) and gimmickry utterly overshadow substance. The fuzzy choruses are hugely energetic and satisfyingly speaker-thrashing. But there's nothing there. The same is true, later, of pacy but empty 'Bitch Went Nuts'.

Diarrhoea in a sieve

Throughout the album, the embarrassment of riches in terms of wouldn't it be cool if we...-type ideas is matched by a very real embarrassment at the paucity of fundamentally strong material. Ben Folds has always been able to take a good song that bit further with a clever, outside-the-box musical device. One of the principal reasons for my intense admiration of Folds is his musical restlessness: his unwillingness to settle merely for a good song, but to add something unexpected and clever to make it great.

Unfortunately, in Way To Normal, he's doing the unexpected and clever things - but without the strong starting points.

So in 'The Frown Song' we have the kind of unprepared, abrupt, song-lifting key-changes that I normally applaud. But here they've nothing to lift. Or, rather, they're lifting a turd. No, wait ... Worse. They're lifting (if you'll pardon the horribly scatological extension of the metaphor) diarrhoea. In a sieve. Elsewhere, we have keyboard solos that cleverly doff a hat to multiple musical eras and genres in the space of 16 bars; hillbilly-parodying vocals; ring-modulated, crispily-synthesised piano-based beats (in 'Free Coffee') ... But what for?

'You Don't Know me', the single and duet with Regina Spektor is notable only insofar as it wastes to an almost criminal extent her vocal talents. I by no means object to the extremely poppy production and stylings of the song. BF is free, in my book, to go as pop as he likes. He has done it well before. But not here. The song is bland, featureless, bereft of direction. All the things that good pop has in abundance.

Poor Regina.

And let's talk lyrics

At times, listening to this album for the first time, I worried about Ben. He is perilously close to the deeply unbecoming: bitterness, slathering rhetoric, borderline misogyny. We don't want to hear lyrics that sound as though they're written in recriminatory tones with a particular individual in mind. It's not funny; it's embarrassing, and discomfitting. It puts me off big-style.

Cologne is affecting, lyrically. But only relative to the uninspired majority of these songs. On another BF album, it'd hardly be a standout track, as it is here: definitely sub-Jesusland (a song I didn't even much like, at the time). The chorus is pretty insipid, and, again, the melodies are not memorable. I'd challenge anyone to sing back more than a fragment of any of these songs after one or two listens.

Similarly, 'Kylie From Conneticut' is lovely, as a last track. But in the same way as a B-side might be lovely. Because you weren't expecting it. It is profoundly disappointing that a BF-ballad-by-numbers song such as this should be my favourite track on an album. At least it seems to be lyrically empathetic, rather than sneering.

What else? 'Errant Dog' is just rubbish. An unbelievably annoying song that also manages to murder a metaphor that Folds used far more effectively on the EP track 'Dog' (which is, incidentally, better than anything on this album, by leagues).

In conclusion

Folds has always been a musical shapeshifter, an ironist, an imitator and a satirist. He has always had fingers in many musical genrepies. And has happily juxtaposed styles with a charismatic, ironising wink. I know this is the kind of thing that some people find intrinsically annoying (as Fieldvole will perhaps attest) - but I've tended to feel that BF carries it off because he has always backed it up with strong musical techniques and, above all, songwriting skills.

On this album, that third leg of the stool (no link-in with my earlier scatological punning intended) - the songwriting - has disappeared.

If the Beach Boys had sung about rape and abortion ... Amanda Palmer

Well, this is a curious one. As you may indeed already have gathered.

Amanda Palmer, Oasis mp3 (yousendit)

It starts off normal enough: brittle, percussive piano. But pay attention to the lyrics and you'll soon observe – shall we say? – a certain disjunction between musical style and subject-matter.

Listen for yourself, Heavy Soil readers. What think'st? Beautifully-poised wit or a controversy too far? Comment away, my pretties.

Whatever you may think of the lyrics, though, you must surely applaud the fine pop production of Mr Ben Folds. He has compressed the ass off this one – and all to the good. Full of nice details.

Anyhow, Amanda Palmer released her album – Who Killed Amanda Palmer? – today. I shall be reviewing it not too long hence. Here's the official site – though, be warned: international delivery P&P is exorbitant.

... Oh, and, yes: it's that Oasis.

As ever, may I disclaim: the mp3 hereabovelinked is for, as they say, evaluative purposes only. You like it, you buy it. Um. Please.

Plaintive ballad meets Kung Fu Fighting: Ben Folds

Elated by the news of Ben Folds Five's imminent (albeit likely temporary) reunion, Heavy Soil drapes the song of the day mantle upon one of Mr Folds' many fine ditties:

Kalamazoo mp3 (via YouSendIt)

Now, this is an old, old BFF song – that Ben Folds subsequently recorded as a solo artist in studio finery for his 2004 EP Super D. The whole EP is a mere four English pounds on iTunes, so – if you like it – don't just mp3-and-run, will ya?

What to expect? Minimal, stop-start piano and Folds' vocals at their plaintive best (Jesus, he has a good voice).

Then, 1.07: has a ride cymbal hit ever been better placed? Nice drum entry.

So, now you're about halfway through. You think you have the measure of the track, right?

Wrong. So very, very wrong.

Bring on the 80s disco stabs, tremolo octave strings and time-signature-related capriciousness.

What a B-side.