9. Ben Folds Five: Whatever and Ever Amen
When I first heard Ben Folds Five I was a kid listening to the radio. This strange song came on and I guess I kinda liked it... but I wouldn’t admit it. I liked ROCK this was just a weird piano ballad which a strangely high pitched vocalist. I kinda liked Song for the Dumped when it was released a few weeks later and then promptly forgot the band existed.
Suddenly my Junior year of High School, I randomly started to think about Song for the Dumped. This was in the years of Napster so I looked the song up and downloaded it, I no longer kind liked it... i straight up fucking LOVED it. I downloaded more and more Ben Folds Five and became increasingly obsessed with them. Finally I bought Whatever and Ever Amen (as well as all their other albums). I hope that some people could understand this... I chose to NOT download the full album. After falling in love with 4 or 5 songs I just bought all their albums. This is why I don’t mind file sharing programs.
Anyway as for Whatever and Ever Amen the record quickly became one of my favorite and most played albums. Folds has called the band “Punk Rock for Wusses” which is pretty fucking accurate. They’re very much in the vein of the 90’s Elvis Costello (by which I mean they’re better than the ACTUAL Elvis Costello in the 90s).
One of the biggest stand out tracks is the closing number Evaporated. The slow ballad is a beautiful, sad song about broken hearts and moving on. To this day I want to write a movie that ends with this song.
If the only thing you know by Ben Folds is Brick trust me check out this album. It’s very different than what you’re familiar with. I’ll throw the opening track One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn faces here for you to enjoy
No comments:
Post a Comment