Four
years ago, I’m watching Ben Folds Five at the Vic,
one of the best places ever to see a concert.
I lean over to my buddy Tim and say “You
know, there’s no way Ben is ever going to break up
this band, because he has the best rhythm section he
could possibly ask for.”
Whoops. After their third album, 1999’s The
Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, he
did just that. He killed the band.
And his past comes back to actually hinder
him somewhat on his solo debut, Rockin’ The
Suburbs. (I’m
not counting the Fear of Pop album as his
debut, as it was more of a loony experiment)
There are few in pop who know their way
around a pop tune like Folds does, but a little more
change would have done him a lot of good.
Folds
plays every instrument on the album himself, save
for the more complicated guitar bits (which he
leaves to Love Spit Love guitarist Richard Fortus),
and BF5 drummer Darren Jessee’s absence is
immediately noticeable on the opening track “Annie
Waits.” Ben
is a serviceable drummer (he’s better than Lenny
Kravitz, at least), but Jesse was damn good, so
Suburbs’ opening track suffers unfairly as a
result. It’s
a good tune, but all I hear is how obvious it is
that Jessee’s not playing the drums.
There
are some gems here, though. “Losing Lisa” is like Folds covering Jellyfish’s “Now
She Knows She’s Wrong,” a 2-liter bottle of
fizzy sparkly Bacharach-esque ‘60s pop.
“The Ascent of Stan” is a maudlin tune
about a rebel who sold out (first you wanted
revolution/Now you’re the institution/How’s it
feel to be the man?”).
And the title track, dear God, the title
track, exposes those ridiculous rap metal bands for
what they are:
“Let
me tell ya’ll what it’s like
to be
male, middle class, and white
…all
alone in my white boy pain
Shake
your booty while the band complains”
My
favorite line, right before the rock-out finale;
“You better watch out, ‘cause I’m gonna say
‘fuck’.” And he does a wicked impression of former Rage Against The
Machine singer Zack De La Rocha in the middle break. Hysterical.
What
hurts Suburbs is the songs’ similarity to
earlier work. “Carrying
Cathy” has elements of “Selfless, Cold and
Composed,” “The Ascent of Stan” recalls
“Mess,” and “Zak and Sarah” recalls
“Philosophy.”
Some songs overcome their similarities,
others don’t.
There are a couple ballads, “Fred Jones
Part 2” in particular, that nearly sink the
record. One
“Brick” was enough, thank you.
Folds
is still a force to reckon with, and you’ll be
hard pressed to find someone smarter (or a bigger
smartass) on the pop landscape.
But if he doesn’t watch it, his continuous
jokes will start to get old if they’re not framed
around an original melody.
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