Posts Tagged ‘Ben Folds’

  
Thursday, August 13th, 2009

CD Review: Amanda Palmer, “Who Killed Amanda Palmer”

by Dw. Dunphy

51vAbBb77TL._SCLZZZZZZZ_[1]I remember when the Dresden Dolls first came out. All my friends who knew my tastes told me I had to check them out, that I would love this duo. I’d ask what they were like and would get, “They’re a cross between goth and cabaret,” to which I’d reply, thanks but no thanks. It was totally a knee-jerk reaction but during this time, I was receiving a lot of promo material from a metal label that started focusing on the goths. After a month, I had a stack of CDs with black-lipped women moaning about the “exquisite death” and “sensual pain,” followed quickly by shrieks that could only be produced by someone giving birth to a schoolbus. Thank you and no, said I, to the Dresden Dolls.

Cut to three weeks ago. I’m in the local bookstore. It’s rather a liberal atmosphere there, meaning they’re not afraid to play CDs with the dirty words in them, so I’m listening as I rifle through the graphic novels section. It’s sounding pretty good, in fact. It’s piano rock, a super-sub-genre that’s been hurting lately. I was disappointed with the recent Regina Spektor and Tori Amos albums and the category as a whole often slides into Adult Contemporary blather about undying love or line after line of toothless affirmations. What was playing had, dare I say it, some edge left to it. I went to the counter and asked what it was.

“Oh, that’s Amanda Palmer. She’s from the Dresden Dolls.” Oops. “It’s been out for almost half a year now.” Double oops. (more…)

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Monday, June 8th, 2009

CD Review: Reed KD, “In Case the Comet Comes”

by Dw. Dunphy

reed-kdTwo things happened to the producer’s lot when home recording went digital. We’ll cover the second later on, but before the laptop and PC, home recorders used cassette machines that utilized 4, 6 and 8 tracks on the tiny width of a store-bought Maxell tape. To increase the amount of tracks, you’d have to “bounce,” meaning recording on seven of the tracks, playing back those seven and bouncing them down to the eighth, then starting the process all over again. You got more sounds, but also more hiss. Now, with home versions of ProTools, a home recorder has as many tracks as he or she has the patience to fill. Filters combat hiss and various tricks can foil the sound of Do It Yourself recording.

It would come as a surprise to many that Reed KD’s new CD, In Case The Comet Comes, is DIY. Its notes claim it was recorded on the road, in many homes, many living rooms and a closet or two, yet there are very few audible giveaways. The songs are, for the most part, buoyant homegrown Americana, some mood pieces, all performed with vigor and commitment. The opening “This Is It” is a spare but lively folk tune with more than a hint of bluegrass rough & tumble. The following “If The Tide Swings” fleshes out the previous song’s hinted promises. It is a healthy start, even if the two are rhythmically similar and would have benefited with a couple dissimilar songs between them. Again, there isn’t a moment that screams ‘homemade’ but at the same time, there are no screams of plastic synthesis either as so many new studio recordings have a breathless, deathly precision to them. Reed KD has managed to strike the balance enough to indicate the album was made by living human beings.

While KD can handle the barnstormer, he is also adept with moodier pieces, such as “Space Vacuums.” There is a strange wit to his lyrics that, when combined with this particular tune, puts me in the mind of some Ben Folds/Richard Buckner hybrid. I’m a sucker for that ethereal, echoey slide guitar sound and it’s put to incredible effect here, making the song an emotional highlight of the collection. (more…)

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Thursday, October 9th, 2008

Dw. Dunphy On… New Releases

by Dw. Dunphy

We are now officially in the fourth quarter sales market. Department stores have begun to roll out the Christmas decorations, big summer movies are winding their way to the DVD department and some major releases in music are on the horizon for the all-important time in the retail year. It seemed appropriate, then, for me to discuss some of the most recent new releases in my headphones, one of which comes with a lot of expectation and another that exploded unbidden from out of the blue. Intrigued?

Ben Folds, Way to Normal (Epic)

I’ve been a fan of Folds’s work for a long time but find his solo efforts incredibly uneven. His last release, Songs for Silverman, was a leaden, ballad-heavy affair with very few tracks to really grab hold of. The latest, Way to Normal, should have been a return to form but only half succeeds. Sure, he regains a bit of his bounce and more than a bit of his bite, but the songs come from a sticky place: the dissolution of his third marriage, a relationship that informed most of his previous two albums. What you end up with is a lot of songs that make you feel like a friend has borrowed your ear for a while, relating to you how horrible that witch he used to be with has been. All the while, you have a sneaking suspicion that this friend is hardly as innocent as he claims.

I have no idea about the details of Folds’s personal life or how his marriage came apart. With semi-scathing tunes like “Bitch Went Nuts”, “Errant Dog,” and “You Don’t Know Me,” I frankly don’t want to know. Kiss-off and piss-off songs are common fodder in pop music, but they’re easier to take in smaller doses. They’re also easier on the ears when the production isn’t as abrasive as Dennis Herring’s. Tweedly-sounding synths, canned beat construction, occasional distortions that could be mistaken for blown speakers all attempt to frame the tunes in the most modern way, but become tiresome after a while. Worse, “You Don’t Know Me” employs the wonderful Regina Spektor and gives her nothing to really work with. Spektor, like Folds, has harnessed the power of solo voice and piano to great effect, so it’s really disappointing to find that anyone could have contributed her part on this song. (more…)

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Monday, October 6th, 2008

Listening Booth: Ben Folds, “Way to Normal”

by Jeff Giles

Ben Folds – Way to Normal (Epic, 2008)
purchase this album (Amazon)

Ben Folds has always been an artist I’ve appreciated more in theory than in practice. I’ve appreciated the theory enough to continue buying his albums for almost 15 years now, so I suppose the distinction is almost too fine to matter, but still — I can’t remember a time when my purchase of a Folds album didn’t result in a rush of immediate gratification (example: hearing “Jackson Cannery” in 1995 and thinking “Jesus, yes! Someone remembers how to play a piano”) followed by a vague but persistent sense of disappointment (example: the way I felt after hearing “Rockin’ the Suburbs” for the fifth or sixth time).

Folds’ last album, Songs for Silverman, has been a bone of contention among his fans since it was released in 2005; for some, its largely placid soundscapes signaled a leap forward in maturity for the fortysomething father, while for others, it was a cold hash of MOR ballads and self-conscious attempts at humor. But even at his most awkwardly divisive, Folds always manages to get in a solid punch or two — I confess to getting a little choked up the first time I heard Silverman’s daddy-daughter track, “Gracie,” and even if it was mostly just because my wife and I had our first child that year, you get the point: He may not always be able to get out of his own way, but Ben Folds has sharp pop instincts, which is why his fans expect so much from him.

I may not be a hardcore fan, but I was more than mildly intrigued by the prospect of Folds’ latest, Way to Normal — enough so that I ponied up the $30 for the “deluxe edition” version that comes bound in book-style binding and includes a DVD (which I will almost certainly never watch). I could have harassed a publicist for a free copy — probably even a free advance copy — but I was so sure Folds was going to bounce back from Silverman that I was willing to lay my money on the line.

Folds, you fucker. You’ve scammed me again. (more…)

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Monday, September 1st, 2008

Fall Music Preview: 21 New Releases to Listen For

by Jeff Giles

Ah, the fourth quarter. It isn’t as much of an event as it used to be, but even as the music industry crumbles to dust before our very eyes, artists and labels continue to focus on the last few months of the year for the biggest glut of high-profile releases on the calendar, and 2008 is no exception.

Rather than punishing your eyes with a comprehensive fall music preview, or soliciting input from everyone on the staff, I decided to put together a list of the titles I’m either looking forward to (Lindsey Buckingham, Brian Wilson), need to hear to satisfy some dark, unexplained urge (Gym Class Heroes, Queen), or simply find interesting for some reason (Todd Rundgren, AC/DC). If you’ve been waiting for someone to tell you how to spend the “music” portion of your discretionary income for the next few months, look no further — without further ado, here’s my list of 21 fall releases to watch for.


Rodney Crowell – Sex & Gasoline (Yep Roc, September 2)

In which one of country’s most freewheeling (read: consistently interesting) songwriters hooks up with Yep Roc for a song cycle that, if the press kit is to be trusted, is “about women.” You can be certain the songs do more than just live up to that simple billing, especially with titles like “The Rise and Fall of Intelligent Design” — and as an added bonus, our pal Joe Henry was behind the boards (and does a duet with Crowell on one track, “I’ve Done All That I Can”). What, you don’t like country? Yeah, me neither. But I’m buying this. (more…)

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Sunday, March 16th, 2008

Dw. Dunphy On… Ben Folds

by Dw. Dunphy

SilvermanInstincts run hot and cold, depending on who is relying on them. Some artists go against the grain and it works out fantastically for them. Some make last-minute choices that, while not haunting them forever, certainly don’t help them a hell of a lot. Ben Folds runs somewhere in the middle.

His biggest successes came early on as the namesake of the Ben Folds Five trio. That first eponymous disc was eminently buzz-worthy, whipping indie kids into a frenzy much as we’ve seen with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Arctic Monkeys and, more recently, Vampire Weekend. The second disc, Whatever And Ever Amen, made a strong case for the resurgence of piano pop, and indeed we hadn’t heard something so pretty (and at the same time vitriolic) since Joe Jackson’s punk period. It didn’t hurt that “Brick” suddenly became an unexpected hit. After one more studio disc and a b-sides/live cuts compilation, though, the three in the Five were reduced to one. (more…)

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