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BEN FOLDS FIVE Messner is the renowned (but hardly well-known) mountaineer who scaled Mount Everest, solo and without oxygen, in 1978. Does Folds see himself reflected in the ambition of one who scales supposedly unreachable peaks, against all conventional wisdom, achieving a taste of the sublime mere mortals can only buy Sugar Ray albums in an attempt to achieve? Folds himself would probably answer, "Who the heck cares?" But if the first two Ben Folds Five albums scratched at the door of pop perfection, Reinhold Messner kicks it in and redecorates the room. Vaulting, shimmering, and heartbreaking -- even as it offers a bereft smirk and a dose of savant-sardonics -- Ben Folds Five's latest is perhaps the last great pop album of a century that's been content to cuddle Britney Spears and Irving Berlin. Imagine Burt Bacharach channeling Kurt Weil, Rodgers fistloving Hammerstein, Eddie Haskell possessing Linus... You're getting close. "Narcolepsy", the album opener, can best be described as 'poperatic' -- a stunning, left-fielder that could serve as the theme song for My Own Private Idaho: The Broadway Musical. Plaintive one moment, cascading in big-boomery the next, the tune is pure Folds -- oddball and poignant, authoritative and submissive at once. "Magic," written by band drummer Darren Jessee, is simply the most beautiful song to fall on this listener's ears in eons. A toy piano, an achingly simply lyric, a dreamy falsetto, and a trip to a crescent moon: beyond beautiful. Don't think Folds, the smart-aleck, has left the building, though. On the one-two punch of "Army" (the first single) and "Your Redneck Past", Folds and company rip through the fabric of trailer park dreams and riff-raff ideology, sending goofball confetti across a soundscape of slap, jazz, hippie, and harmony. Album's only misstep is the mildly engaging, if utterly indulgent, "Your Most Valuable Possession," a spoken-worder that, presumably, picks up where Folds' hilarious collaborative opus with William Shatner (on last year's side project, Fear of Pop) left off. Featuring sci-fi-ish knobtwirling over an answering machine message from a fan obsessed with all things corporeal and galactic, the number meanders into oblivion. But if you're planning on packing it up for a long hike or a steep elevator ride, or if you just can't stand that the highest you can get in today's pop-culture landscape is number-one with Brandy, get thee to the record shop and put Reinhold Messner in your cooler. Reviewed by LegitCrit |
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"It's
either sadness or euphoria," sang Billy Joel some 25 years
ago and, as the deep-feelers of the world know, the best of
everything is a little bit of both. Among these
touchy-feelies, count Ben Folds and his supersized keg of
sarcasm. A sadsack who wears regret like a clown nose and
disappointment like floppy shoes, Folds is tatooed with
daydreams that got dented and passions that got bent. His
piano and voice forming one-third of Ben Folds Five, the
33-year old North Carolinan is the rare bird who can massage
non sequiter into universal heartbreak, all inside of
three-minutes and an upright piano. In short, he is fresh
air in a stale musical landscape. Which may explain the
obscure Reinhold Messner allusion in the title of the band's
third album.
