Ben Folds and William Shatner Walk Into a Studio…
Punchline? There’s supposed to be a punchline?
FEAR OF POP
Vol. 1
550 Records
*** 3.5/5
By far Ben Folds’ most obscure album, FEAR OF POP is also his most delightfully strange. Released just after BEN FOLDS FIVE’s Whatever and Ever Amen, Vol. 1 is an experimental and all-over-the-place solo collection that has so much fun living up to its tongue-in-cheek moniker that its defiant eccentricity very well might turn a lot of people off. Others, though, those looking for something a little different, something risky and weird, it’s sure to be a welcomed and perfect fit.
Establishing early its separateness from Folds’ mainstream work, the title track opens the album with a buzzing synth line, not a piano, and a jazzy beat. It builds its sound on electronics and precussion, piercing feedback and near-whispered versus, then climaxes with Folds howling “Fear of Pop!” at his most strained and unmelodic. That segues right into “Kops,” an instrumental track sprinkled with sound samples of Folds being pulled over by police–the music police?–but challenging them rather than bowing to their authority.
“I wasn’t speeding,” he tells the officer. Then he lashes out: “See ya’, sucker!”And he drives away, tires screeching. Cue police sirens, gunfire and the sound of a high speed pursuit. After a crash, breaking glass and helicopters, the Man seems to have him surrounded. But Folds won’t be beaten. “I’ll take you with my bare hands!” he retorts. And the chase rages on.
Following the opening’s boldness, the rest of the album is just as hellbent on being itself, in its mixing of pretty and harmonious tracks like “Slow Jam ‘98″ next to noisy and raucous ones like “Root to This,” or simply in its sharp-edged disposition. But at its core is an overarching sense of musical entitlement, as if making this kind of out-there album, diverging this much from public perception/expectation is not only Folds’ right but really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. You see it most in the lyric-heavy tracks, ones like William Shatner’s spoken word diddy “In Love”–the album’s definite high point–where he waxes anti-romantic about love and relationships. The track is a fusion of beautifully done syth and string work, Folds’ vocal layers and Shatner’s words resting against one another perfectly, creating such deep and wonderful textures. You see it also, maybe especially, in “I Paid My Money,” where, due to principle, Folds sings about refusing to leave a theater in mid-movie because, well, he paid his money, and he’ll “not be screwed.”
Throughout FEAR OF POP’s duration, the mock arena-style of “Rubber Sled,” or the manic “Root to This,” or the violin plucked soundscapes of Shatner’s tracks, is a wild and vicarious feeling of accomplishment. The music retains Folds’ signature excitement and playfulness but it’s such a drastic stylistic shift that it ends up landing on this interesting line of immediate artist recognition and complete musical disorientation.
“I love to paint sounds in an abstract way,” Folds wrote in 1997, back when he was putting the solo/side-project together, “discovering their effect after it’s all put together. Once you’ve sold a million records, you’ve earned the right to experiment self-indulgently at the expense of your record company.”
From synthesiers to orchestras, poetry to crashing cars, Folds makes something in FEAR OF POP that’s difficult to completely wrap your head around. Lacking any real tonal coherency, the songs that make up the album are connected almost solely by the fact that they’re all so very different, that they’re not connected. It ends up not being so much Ben Folds’ “next record” as as it does an exercise in letting go.
“I Paid My Money,” for example, was written and recorded before BEN FOLDS FIVE even got big (or at least known). But it never made it onto one of their releases because BFF was always very controlled stylistically. It wouldn’t have made contextual sense. FEAR OF POP, though, is Ben Folds being jarring, taking his creative skeletons out the closet and flying them like flags outside his window, to assert himself, or maybe to get over any self-consciousness he still might have had–even after selling a million records. Otherwise, to ignore the crazy creative side of music-making, the side that might not make any logical sense, is to be like the people leaving the theater early in “I Paid My Money.” “They don’t know what they’re missing,” folds writes. “They’re missing half the movie.”
What’s maybe most fun about Folds’ foray away from pop here is that it’s not meant to be taken completely seriously–Shatner’s presence alone proves that point. He’s having a good time, going nuts with the all the toys he has at his disposal in the studio, collaborating with other musicians (like John Mark Painter and wife Fleming McWilliams of FLEMING AND JOHN) and using the “go big or go home” philosophy with his experimentation.
As much as I enjoy this album, though–and I really do enjoy it–I’ll be honest and say that it probably winds up landing on that uneven shelf of “novelty,” a collector’s item for Folds fans in the same minor-but-interesting bin as his 2003 collaboration with Ben Lee and Ben Harper, THE BENS. But that really doesn’t mean it’s not worth its due.
FOP might not be the elusive Folds masterpiece that just happened get the short end of the marketing shaft by being unaccessible, but it’s certainly got a hell of a lot charm. And with Shatner’s “who woulda’ thought,” crazy-enough-to-work presence, his smooth and vintage-feeling, stick-it-to-the-Woman spoken word poetry, it truly is doing new and exciting things. Often clunky, fairly short and more about form than content, more statement than focused composition, Vol. 1 is not Folds’ best record. But it’s definitely one of his most exciting, and it did surprise me. Any record with balls enough to stop a song mid-groove when the singer says “Funky bass,” giving the bassist the floor to deliver said funky bass for a few bars, is more than all right in my book.
Watch a clip below of Folds and Shatner performing “In Love” on Conan, their 1st and only live performance.
This entry was posted on Friday, June 5th, 2009 at 8:29 pm and is filed under cd reviews, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
