am/fm: Ben Folds, "Way to Normal"

Ben Folds, "Way to Normal"

I've been listening to Folds' latest album for a few weeks, and I'm having a hard time getting my head around it. Upon first listen, I actually hated it. Which for me is a big deal. Ben Folds is one of my musical heroes and I've loved everything he's done without question up until now.

Of course, I had to give it another six chances, and to me it still sounds like a really angry record. There's a lot of broken-heart relationship stuff, and on a lot of the songs, he drops the distance of the third person and it sounds like he's really singing from the heart (or the spleen, rather). Which may just me confusing first person storytelling with Ben Folds speaking directly to me about all his feelings and problems. No, he probably is speaking directly to me.

Anyway. There is some good stuff here. His duet with Regina Spektor on "You Don't Know Me" (video here) is a lot of fun. "Cologne" takes the story of astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak and turns it into a really poignant meditation on fading love, kind of the reverse emotion of "The Luckiest" off "Rockin' the Suburbs."

Folds plays around a lot with instrumentation, adding electronic noise to his traditional piano and rhythm section set up. I hate change, so this doesn't really work for me.

In all, I think I'm still digesting the album. The stuff I like definitely stays closer to his work of the past — I'm sorry, Ben. I know what I like from you, and I don't like when you toy with me like this.

—eh