Ben Folds Way to Normal by: Steve Scully Tue:30-Sep-08 Label: Sony BMG Year: 2008 WB rating 50 out of 100

At the helm of one of the 90s most loved rock bands, Ben Folds could do nothing wrong. Widely-adored, but unlike many of their contemporaries, rarely imitated, the band spawned some brilliant records, and at least one or two of the decade’s most recognizable tunes. So why has Ben Folds’ solo career been such a downer? That’s a tough question to answer. Way to Normal, the newest installment in the saga of the king of the nerdy rockstars, is just what you expect from Folds when he’s in full swing: rollicking piano numbers, tongue-in-cheek lyrical barbs. It’s also what you expect from Folds when he’s flipped the auto-pilot switch. Perhaps that’s the issue: Ben Folds hasn’t changed one little bit.

On a number of tracks, an unnerving and off-putting trend emerges. Have you sent the promos for Billy Joel’s recent tours? Have you ever stopped to look at pictures of Paul McCartney in trash magazines? The aging rock stars are perhaps the most unlikable. McCartney may have been the king of cool (or maybe not) in the 60s and early 70s, but that soon disappeared as synthesizers made his up-beat solo stuff sound down-right ridiculous and his face suffered from the same fate as Isaac Newton’s apple, the skin folds hurtling towards the earth. And Billy Joel? Well, with just one look at the baseball cap stuck firmly backwards as he prances about singing ‘Only the Good Die Young’, you’ll get the point. Ben Folds is, now more than ever, en route to their dinner party: a party where they can bitch about young kids all they want, swap wives and drink-drive to their heart’s content... and write painfully daggy music til the cows die of boredom.

‘Bitch Went Nuts’ is Fold-by-numbers as far as the music itself is concerned. Rocking piano, with just a little splash of 60s rock and the 90s breed of punk, it’s a fun enough song to listen to, until the lyrics take hold that is. Gone are the days of subtlety and ingenuity in Folds’ wordplay, and in their place sit basic puerility. “The bitch went nuts/ she stabbed my basketball/ and the speakers to my stereo,” he sings, before belting out the killer line: “she called me ‘cunt’.” It would be funny and light-hearted if it wasn’t such an endless diatribe; it would be vaguely humorous if he didn’t churn out these misanthropic, misogynous over-and-over again. In light of Folds’ personal circumstance, it’s also painful to listen to: constant marriage breakdowns have marred his nerdy, nice-guy appeal, and these tracks further highlight the self-centeredness of the guy.

Album opener ‘Hiroshima (B B B Benny hit his head)’ is even more pretentious and unappealing. What could be a funny little song about Folds falling off a stage during a show in Japan becomes a self-aggrandising account from a man who so obviously thinks everything that happens is worthy of a big piano power ballad.

All this said, Folds can still write a killer tune. The singular killer tune in this case is ‘You Don’t Know Me’. Aided by Regina Spektor – whose songwriting isn’t too far dissimilar from Folds’, although infinitely more fresh and interesting – Folds belts out something that could easily be on Rufus Wainwright’s repertoire: undeniably show-tuney, with down-beat grandeur in the intermittent backing vocals and string parts. The highlight by miles on an album of so few positives.

Where to for Ben Folds? Something needs to be done. Ben Folds Five, Whatever and Ever Amen and The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner were as good a three albums as any three-album band has ever produced, but since then he’s gone down the Paul McCartney solo path: far too many meaningless ditties, far too few efforts to make his solo career as defining as his career in the band. Be it average, normal, by-numbers, beige, whatever: Way to Normal serves only as a hint that Ben Folds’ brilliance was perhaps only fleeting, and that some artists just don’t have a huge catalogue of record-worthy music in them.