Music Review: Ben Folds - Way to Normal

The press materials for Ben Folds' new album Way to Normal inform me that he wrote the songs "at the end of 2007 following the finalization of a two-year divorce."

I mention it because I know it, and now you know it too. I'm not sure if that matters or not, and I'm curious to determine if it does.

On Way to Normal, Folds does not depart significantly from his best-known musical and songwriting styles; these tunes are straight-ahead piano-based pop. They're all incredibly well-constructed, clever, catchy, and occasionally heart-wrenching. He does drift from the script in terms of the album's sound, moving away from cleanly-miked acoustic instruments and creating a claustrophobic and slightly distant vibe through the use of production tricks. Drums echo; a piano solo is sped up and scattered over a bridge like bits of broken glass.

It's a great pop record, if at times brittle and disconcerting. Just like a divorce, I imagine.

The PR for Way to Normal tells us about the divorce, then suggests we actually shouldn't think about it: "But it should not be assumed that Way to Normal is Folds' version of Marvin Gaye's Here My Dear or Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks (though Folds says that in the early stages of recording he came close to calling the album "Blood on the Keyboard")."

Folds in quoted in the same press release as saying, "The songs are not topical. I was not interested in making a record about the D-word. I got all that stuff out of my system on the last record [2005's pensive Songs for Silverman], which was deliberately stoic. This new album is really about me being free, which is why it feels cathartic and expressive. It's about me coming back to being myself. (Hence the title.) I came out of the courthouse, kissed the ground, and walked straight into the studio. I felt like a bottle of champagne that had been shaken for 18 months and popped open in the studio. That's why this record has so much energy."Learning a tidbit like that about a new album is a little like hearing a house is haunted before you get the tour; the marble counter tops may be exquisite, but you're just looking for ghosts.

Article Author: Matt Springer

Matt Springer should probably trim his toenails more often. Instead, he spends far too much time thinking and writing about pop culture ephemera, at Alert Nerd (for geek stuff) and Pop Geek (for everything else). …

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