1) Annie Waits; 2) Zak and Sara; 3) Still Fighting It; 4) Gone; 5) Fred Jones Part 2; 6) The Ascent of Stan; 7) Losing Lisa; 8) Carrying Cathy; 9) Not the Same; 10) Rockin’ the Suburbs; 11) Fired; 12) The Luckiest
A songwriter at his peak: Folds makes his leap to solo recording through a reassured, all-out statement of work.
I love Ben Folds. I love a lot of musicians, in fact, but I hold Folds as one of the greatest songwriters I’ve had the fortune of discovering, purely from the standing point of how to craft a tune. He’s the kind of musician who frequently makes me realise just how fantastically a song can be written, looking beyond production values or instruments chosen and simply paying attention to how brilliantly the core elements have been crafted. There’s an air of classic songwriting to his work, coming from the lineage of others who fall under the musician archetype of a man with a piano bashing out their version of rock music, endearing the crowds with his personality and stealing their hearts with timeless melodies, but the golden touch is all his own. There is a signature element to the way Folds works his piano and weaves his songs, and the way he does it just so happens to leave me giddy and excited.
Now while Folds has that classic singer/songwriter gene, that angle isn’t where he started from. Ben Folds Five were anything but. While their songs grew more nuanced as their career progressed, they were always a raucous bunch - the combination of the trio’s instrumental skills and their wild attitude made them a little positively uncontrolled even when at their most serious. It’s what made the band great as well. They eventually split though and Folds, obviously, moved onto a solo career. This is pure speculation on my behalf but stranded from his bandmates, it seems like Folds felt he had a lot to prove. The cover for Rockin’ the Suburbs, Folds’ solo debut (the proper one, not counting the bonkers Fear of Pop side project), finds Folds alone and serious by his piano and you can imagine that’s exactly how he spent days upon days, working meticulously on each song he wanted to present, perfecting a set of songs that would prove he was a writer. Here’s Folds’ attempt to jump into the realm of classic songwriting and to establish himself as a writer to be paid attention to - almost as if because he has to endure endless comparisons to every other dude who ever sat in front of a piano playing pop songs, he might as well try to challenge them.
Rockin’ the Suburbs sounds relaxed and carefree but it’s been immaculately designed and thought out, each note placed with extreme care and each melody thoroughly planned to have the maximum impact. A lot of Folds’ favourite arrangement elements make frequent appearances throughout, from the abundance of backing vocal harmonies to stylish string sections, all backed by his piano chops. The sonical palette has been extended by way of introducing synthesizers and the once-banned guitars into the playfield, allowing Folds to enrichen his sound further. Even the production is pristine for once, with none of the happy accidents and rougher edges Folds normally keeps in his takes. It’s all means to an end: a way for Folds to showcase his style and talents in the finest way he can, to triumphantly announce the start of his new career. That it still ends up sounding so natural is a little triumph in itself: either a testament to Folds’ knack for magic or a meta-cocky humble brag on how perfection comes so easily to him.
Purely stylistically Folds keeps much to his old tricks, but every song on Rockin’ the Suburbs has its own distinct angle to the piano rock formula. The tone switches from power pop blast-outs to stadium anthems and intimate moodpieces to happy-clappy sing-alongs in a way that suits each tale and each central character in them. Whether we’re talking about Annie, Zak, Sara, Fred, Cathy, Lisa, Stan, the un-named born again Christian or all the anonymous first person personas, they all get an appropriately individual musical theme for themselves. Folds as a lyricist is a storyteller at heart instead of someone who wants to open his own personal diary, and the attention he pays to the words and how the lyrics are intertwined with the very sound of the songs they feature in is apparent all over the album, and yet another reason why it makes for such a great listen. Each song comes alive on more than one level when even the people they mention feel like living beings.
There’s a lot to treasure on Rockin’ the Suburbs, whether it’s the quiet melancholy of “Fred Jones, Part 2”, the foot-stomping groove of “The Ascent of Stan”, “Not the Same”’s backing vocal galore or the sublime pop/rock “Gone” with its melodic ebbs and flows. The sarcastic bro-rock of the title track is both a legitimately amusing parody as well as a genuinely good tune in itself that rocks shockingly well (the final trash-out is my particular favourite), and it injects some necessary levity to the album’s more serious second half (plus it wouldn’t be a Ben Folds album without a big goofy grin somewhere). The album’s victory lap is its bookend songs: both two very different creatures but clearly among the very best Folds has ever written. “Annie Waits” opens the album with a clear musical message of what’s to come (the sound of Folds opening his piano cover and playing a couple of precise, punchy notes) and soon launches into a master class example of arrangement and writing, being built out of parts which flow together perfectly despite sounding so different and which all try to one-up eachother in being the catchiest and most hook-laden of the lot. As an opener to not just Rockin’ the Suburbs but also Folds’ solo career as a whole, it’s the perfect introduction to his new approach. The closer “The Luckiest”, on the other hand, is in its composition the complete opposite: a simple arrangement and a simpler structure. It’s a straightforward love song that takes the tired old subject matter and makes it feel fresh and genuine once again, sounding so heartfelt in its off-topic ramblings and attempts to word things that you can’t put into words that it can get downright tearjerking in its sentimentality. The genuine sentiment that comes off “The Luckiest” and its slightly whimsical but ultimately honestly enamoured lyrics make it deeply touching. The two songs take on clearly different guises but what’s they have in common is the utmost respect for songcraft they represent.
Rockin’ the Suburbs is an ode to that approach. It’s a showcase of brilliant songcraft and performance that excites and resonates. Folds himself sounds particularly on fire and in full spirit: even during the album’s more solemn and serious moments, he sounds incredibly joyed to be creating music. Out of all of Folds’ solo albums, this one comes closest to sounding most personal to Folds himself even when the majority of the songs are about other, fictional people, and it’s largely because just how madly inspired and alive he sounds through the music presented. Folds has always been a wonderfully consistent songwriter throughout his entire career, but every single great trait of his has been captured on Rockin’ the Suburbs at their most shining. If I’ve come across as too gushing for the man himself in the past paragraphs, these twelve songs are the very reason why that is. Rockin’ the Suburbs is not just a collection of excellent songs, it’s the very essence of Ben Folds’ talents.
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