With Ben
Folds, deadpan delivers
Ben Folds/Corn Mo
Paradise, Boston, Massachusetts
May 14, 2005
by Marc Hirsh
originally published in The Boston Globe, May 16, 2005
Ben Folds is a performer who has always seemed bemused by his own abilities. He is, by rock and pop music standards, practically a piano virtuoso, but his deadpan never betrays either the difficulty of what he’s playing or the joy of performance that goes along with it. It’s as though Folds doesn’t know how he does it, it’s just something that he does.
That’s not an indication of apathy or humorlessness, just focus, and at the Avalon on Saturday, Folds was the musical equivalent of a comedian who doesn’t laugh at his own jokes. While his musical wanderings keep early comparisons with Joe Jackson relevant, Folds seems to have more and more in common with Randy Newman, balancing ironic commentary with occasionally devastating observation. Had Newman been more of a rock ‘n’ roll baby, he too might have performed piano-ballad versions of Dr. Dre songs.
With another cover, a blazing runthrough of the Cure’s “In Between Days,” kicking things off, Folds touched on a little more than half of his new Songs For Silverman while playing a fairly representative cross-section of his entire catalog. The new songs tended to be more rambling and wayward than his early material, but they came together nicely, with “Bastard” in particular gelling beautifully in a chorus that featured lovely harmony vocals by bassist Jared Reynolds.
Reynolds and drummer Lindsay Jamieson didn’t attempt to duplicate the jazz-punk rhythm attack of the Ben Folds Five, providing an equally versatile but sometimes subtler pop backing. As strong as they were, the evening’s highlight saw Folds alone on stage for a five-song solo set. Folds played ballads like “Brick” and rippers like “Underground,” enlisting the crowd to mimic the horn parts in “Army” but otherwise leaving no sonic holes where drums or bass would have even been necessary.
Like a one-man Tenacious D without the delusions
of grandeur
or an accordion-playing Meat Loaf with self-esteem issues,