Uncle Sam Recommends: Ben Folds’ Way To Normal

Last Friday I took in Ben Folds’ show at Boston’s Orpheum. It was the first time I’d seen an entire* show of his since he & the Five, touring behind Whatever and Ever Amen, absolutely killed at the Paradise waaay back in the day. His live act, sadly, did not age well. His new material, however, sounded great. I left the show excited to finally get my copy of his new album Way To Normal (due tomorrow, 9/30) and sadly determined to never bother to see him play live again.

The Normal stuff was generally excellent: poppy without the prog pretension that marred the Five album Reinhold Messner, and peppy without the heavy-handed, sappy pathos that made his last release Songs for Silverman such a dud. His decision to play the new material and nothing but the new material to an audience completely unfamiliar (and, subsequently, uninterested) with it was not so good. People stayed seated throughout the entire pre-encore show, and the constant stream of people walking about to go buy more beer was thoroughly distracting. I partially blame the audience for those shenanigans, but I extend equal blame to Ben and his impressively boring band. They’re the anti-Five, completely lacking skill, energy, and personality. Folds himself was much quieter than I remember, too. What a snore.

He kicked the encore off with Rockin’ The Suburbs’ “Zak and Sarah” and “Philosophy” from their debut, but the energy and fun quickly disappeared with the “Tiny Dancer” wannabe “Landed” from Silverman and the artificially “fun” “Army” from Messner. The final song played was the a take on the “Frowne Song” that Folds seems determined to turn into a big, rousing show-closing anthem, but it just didn’t work. Just like you can’t give yourself a nickname (I tried in college — ’twas lame & didn’t stick), you can’t goad a crowd into embracing a song as a showstopping anthem.

Despite the bad, bad, bad show-going experience I’m psyched for the album. The songs sounded great and should sound even better on disc than with his disappointing live band. Give Way To Normal a shot when it hits stores this week — I’ll give you download links in this week’s (long overdue) Draft Board post.

* So the last time I had tickets to see Ben Folds, the show became a casualty of Sam and his “New York City Transplant understanding of concert timing” in Boston. I had just moved to Boston, and Folds was making a local stop in support of his solo debut, Rockin’ The Suburbs. I secured tickets for me, Alexis, and her good friend Janice to see him play at the Avalon, a club near Fenway in Boston. The tickets said 8:00 on them, and given my long experience of concert going in NYC, this is how my brain translated the start time: doors open at 8, opening act goes on at 9:00, finishes 9:30-ish, Ben goes on around 10 & plays until around 11:30-midnight. That’s how they roll at places like the Bowery Ballroom, so that’s what I thought it would be like here, too. Turns out I was waaaaayyyy off. The Avalon turns into a lame disco at 10PM every night, so when we got to the club at 9:45, Ben was 2 songs from finishing his encore. My bad. And that, kids, is why I get to concerts really early.