Well, Ben Folds Five's latest release, "The Sound of the Life of the Mind", has taken over both my MP3 player and my free time (as demonstrated by the three posts containing the album's title in this blog, as well as another post inspired by it), and as such, I hardly can think of anything else to talk about.
What I'm doing in this post is discussing reviews of TSOTLOTM. I'm aware of how irritating, pretentious and outright hypocritical that is. What I would like to highlight is that at no point in this post do I intend on saying that anyone is "wrong". Also, I'm not going to link to or specifically name any articles. These are just overall discussions of a few articles on both TSOTLOTM and individual tracks from it. If any of my arguments seem baseless, just do a basic search of the album title in Google.
The first thing that I've realised really quickly is that everyone has a different favourite track. People having different opinions of things is nothing new, but with many albums there is a clear stand-out track. The fact that I have not come across a single reviewer who shares a favourite track with me is quite astounding. My favourite track, again, is the title track, with "On Being Frank" and "Draw A Crowd" a close tied second. Reviewers, both professional and not, are calling mainly "Erase Me", "Sky High" and "Do It Anyway" the best songs of the album. I like the first, can stand the second, but I'm kind of sick of the third. Perhaps if I'd heard it first on the album, I'd be more partial to it. I guess I'll never know.
Again, to emphasise, I'm not saying these reviewers are wrong. Hell, in most scenarios, if everyone had the same opinion as me, I'd be slightly worried. This difference in opinion is clearly a sign that BFF have created a varied and enjoyable album. No reviews I've read so far have written the album off completely, and reviewers have done that for almost every album I've ever enjoyed. This might change drastically when someone unfamiliar with the history of the BFF picks it up after the 18th, but we'll see. I'm really nervous what will happen when people raised on Katy Perry and Kesha (she doesn't deserve the dollar sign) style pop start picking this album up. Again, we'll just have to see.
Returning to the reviews, an irritating trend I've noticed in mainly the professional reviews is that they always attempt to liken BFF to other, better known artists. I've done this in the past, I admit, but my excuse is that I talk about a lot of somewhat obscure music, and as I don't post any kind of media allowing you to experience it, I try to give some idea of what I'm talking about. These reviewers, however, seem to be trying to just put BFF in some kind of category just to make him easier to write off. That is lazy reviewing. Sure, I'm not a pro reviewer, and I have zip in regards to experience, but that just seems a really lousy thing to do.
Finally, the other thing, again mainly professional reviewers, seem to do is compare BFF to Ben Folds solo career. Now, I'm not going to comment on which I prefer, because there is a simple fact many people are overlooking. Ben Folds wrote the lyrics to 8 of the 10 songs on this album. Folds is the lead vocalist. Folds also plays the piano, by far the most prominent instrument for the majority of the album. I'm not saying that Robert Sledge and Darren Jessee had nothing to do with how the album, of course not, but comparing BFF to Ben Folds solo career is really pointless in my opinion, but suppose there might be a clear difference in some people's minds. You want to compare BFF to something? Go listen to Fear of Pop. That'll give you a Ben Folds project to differentiate between. Also, why does every summation of Ben Folds solo career only mention Rockin' The Suburbs (even outside of these reviews)? Sure, the song was successful, but I feel there were a hell of a lot of tracks that also deserve a mention.
Anyway, I'll try to cut back on talking about this album, but I guarantee nothing.
Feedback welcome.
H. Rourke
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