Ben Folds: Genius Or Schtickmeister?

noah | September 29, 2008 10:00 am

Our look at the closing lines of the biggest new-music reviews continues with a roundup of reactions to Way To Normal, the new album by ivory-tinkling ironist and Nick Hornby collaborator Ben Folds:

• “Maybe the tumble in Japan jarred something loose in Folds’ fecund brain. This is the first album where his artistry seems fully realized, both in terms of subject matter and performance. Witty, balanced and highly charged.” [Paste]

• “It would be fitting if Folds never found his way to normal; if this littlest hobo continued to produce his peculiarly open, often majestic and occasionally transcendental brand of potent piano pop–songs which give a particular personal take on the universal truths about lost love we can all relate to. Folds proves that, sometimes, the gamble you take on saying too much can pay off.” [Drowned In Sound]

• “And Folds still drips disdain for everyone and everything around him: Connecticut adulteresses, online psychics, New Age-y suburbanites who are ‘fucking the guru,’ and a dozen other easy targets. If he’s not careful, he’ll become one himself.” [RS]

• ” Even Folds’s knack for a well-placed f-bomb has devolved into a lazy device masquerading as irreverence. His attitude may remain young at heart, but his irony’s over the hill.” [Boston Phoenix]