O! the razor sharp loneliness of the one-man band! Multi-instrumentalists take heed: just because you can play every key, string and percussive surface on your album doesn't necessarily mean you should. There are reasons that the band format has dominated the music industry for the better part of ever, that most of the Songwriter Hall of Fame consists of duos, and that peanut butter sandwiches taste better with jelly. Everyone needs a collaborator.
Ben Folds managed to skirt this immutable law two years ago, when he ditched the Five to do the alone-in-the-studio thing for Rockin' the Suburbs. Though better than it might've been, Suburbs was nonetheless no great evolutionary leap forward for Folds, consisting of largely the same proper-name ivory-pop he made with Robert Sledge and Darren Jesse (if a bit heavier on the tissue-box Harry Chapin son-love ballads). Which raises the question: if you're not going to change the sound that got your CD into every college girl's sun-visor disc wallet, why fire your band?
These EPs, released under-radar-stylee through that radical indie warehouse iTunes, would seem to present the perfect secret stage for Folds to branch out into new areas, as he brings a few members of his touring band in-studio for two no-frills quintets of new material and covers. And yet, Sunny 16 and Speed Graphic find the piano-man following the same old steps, with BFF trademarks like fuzz-plucked distorto-bass, rampant harmonizing, and liberal application of lyrical swear-snark appearing with no less frequency than usual.
Thematically, "There's Always Someone Cooler than You" is a dilution of the Bizkit-taunt "Rockin' the Suburbs", which was in turn a dilution of the hipster-roasts "Underground" and "The Battle of Who Could Care Less". Whereas the wry skewering of the latter track were dead-on observations chased with unshakeable minor-key doo-dooing, the voice of "Always Someone Cooler" is more a condescending curmudgeon act, no longer laced with that little twinge of self-effacement that leavens the scolding. In fact, the majority of Sunny 16's lyrics appear in the form of parental commands: "There's never gonna be no moment of truth for you," "You've got to give the people what they want," "Go bless someone else for a while." Sit through this much piano-bench lecturing and you start to understand why Folds can't hold a band together.
Sunny 16 barely scrounges up a Mendoza line average, the only standout being "Rockstar", where Folds' key-banging revisits the chordal triumph of oldies like "The Last Polka" and the admonishments seem at least partially self-directed. But these good feelings are quickly snuffed by his dreadfully saccharine cover of The Divine Comedy's "Songs of Love", a track that excuses a certain level of romanticism, but not the overwrought string section spackled on by Folds in lieu of the original's awesomely tinny harpsichord. Less grating is his take on The Cure's "In Between Days" on Speed Graphic, done fairly straight; like his old cover of Built to Spill's "Twin Falls", the song acclimates surprisingly well to piano interpretation, even if it misses its old acoustic chug.
Of Speed Graphic's originals, only the anxious drumming and Joe Jackson chording of "Protection" comes off as more than a castaway, while dreary-slow material like "Wandering" and "Give Judy My Notice" continue adult-contempt-orary pandering for the "Brick" audience and moms who discovered Ben on United In-Flight music videos. That three of the short-player's five tracks are older compositions only now being laid to tape might excuse the lack of progression evidenced here, but the songs also do little to dispel the notion that Folds is scraping the barrel of his range.
This EP series was initially planned as a trilogy, but for whatever conspiratorial reasons you want to dream up (certainly not sales, as both have done rather well on Steve Jobs' idle finger to the record labels), the third part was recently scrapped. Perhaps Ben's taking the collaboration maxim to heart, though future projects with Bens Kweller and Lee (still waiting on my royalty check, guys) and, gulp, his second with William Shatner, appear less than promising. In the meantime, anyone who once had a soft spot for Folds' days of poor arithmetic can only hope he'll snap out of his slump, rather than follow the all-too-familiar rock-pianist descent into jazz cover albums and Disney scores.
