This March, Ben Folds Five’s Whatever and Ever Amen will turn 20 years old. First of all, if you can remember when those songs were still new, as I can, that’s terrifying. Oldness is terrifying. You know what though? Whatever and Ever Amen has aged very gracefully. Part of that may be that Ben Folds has always hovered in the general vicinity of pop rock, without drifting into its confines. That has served him well.
Piano-based, gringo rock is such a strange beast. I mean, in the last four decades, you’ve got… what, Ben Folds, Billy Joel, Leonard Cohen, and Elton John. They’re almost a genre unto themselves. If you put yourself into the mindset of a honky piano player, you can sort of see how it would happen. You pretty much have to have parents who put you on the piano early, probably against your wishes, so you end up with this overly classical background. That means you’ve probably got parents who are tuned into you and your hobbies, whether you like it or not, and that usually means that you’ve probably stayed pretty well out of trouble, and as a consequence are a little soft around the edges, but you’ve also been told you’re special your whole life, because your parents are tuned into you, so you’re confident enough to rock the crap out of this nerdy little skill you’ve been dilligently cultivating when you get home from school. The result? Yep. A Ben Folds. A Billy Joel. A Regina Spektor.
OK, OK — take it easy. I know there are other piano players. I’m talking nerdy white folk, leading a band, by way of piano, playing piano 100% of the time, singing, and playing pop rock. To me, this is an interesting, startlingly small segment of the musical population, and really a pretty narrow personality and songwriting profile! The only more homogeneous, lonelier frontman demographic, is of course the drumming frontman. And that’s basically Phil Collins. Just Phil. …and the Death From Above 1979 guy. But I digress.
So you’ve played classical piano arrangements until you were 15, because that’s what you learned in your piano lessons, on an instrument that spans seven octaves, upon which you can hypothetically play ten notes at a time. This is an instrument that you can play entire arrangements on in one sitting, by yourself, unlike any other generally accessible instrument. It’s this weird little uniquely lonely instrument. You can sort of play bass, or guitar, or drums by yourself, and it’s sort of satisfying, but you realistically need someone else to play some other instrument to feel like you’re really making music. But piano you can play completely alone, and be completely satisfied. Full fledged bass line on the left, full fledged lead on the right. You don’t need anyone else. That contributes a bit to that singular, pianist frontman psyche, I think: a measure of introspective honesty that you might not quite be able to muster in the context of writing for a full band. A dose of confidence that you might not be able to deliver if you didn’t know that you were a self-reliant band unto yourself.
Anyway. That’s my little theory on how a Ben Folds comes to be, and how he’s able to deliver his particular brand of Nerd Rock. It’s composed, and cinematic–think “Brick”, or “The Luckiest”, or “Capable of Anything”. These are songs that, instrumentally, could be excellent, excellent movie scores. Lyrically, though, they are equally excellent. His words are moving, and relatable, and confessional, and they have been for over 20 years. The sense of self-aware, self-deprecating humor, the slightly tongue-in-cheek rocking out; all of that has existed in Ben Folds’ material consistently since the 90s. I feel quite confident that you could throw any of the first eight tracks of Folds’ 2015 solo release So There in the middle of Whatever and Ever Amen, and it would sound right at home (instrumentation aside). It’s inspiring.
So many artists spend years devolving into a sad caricature of their prior excellence. For Ben Folds, the range has been there since the beginning, and he has somehow managed to maintain his own distinct smorgasbord of gravitas and levity; delicacy and heaviness, for over two decades, without losing his identity or innate-relatability.
Ben Folds plays The Canopy Club this Saturday, February 25, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are sold out, but make sure to keep your eyes peeled for last minute opportunities.