SLIDE 1: headlights crest the hill
shadows pass her by and out of sight
annie sees in dreams
friday bingo, pidgeons in the park
annie waits for the last time
just the same as the last time

Ben Folds's Rockin' the Suburbs is his masterpiece. I say this so plainly because several reviews ago, i remarked in my review of the Ben Folds Five's Whatever and Ever Amen-- linked at the end of this review for posterity, reference, and a few extra hits-- that Ben Folds had not yet created his masterpiece. It's not that I'm doubting that Ben Folds could, potentially, release an album that could effortlessly trump Rockin' the Suburbs as his primary masterpiece-- because, really, isn't that what we all hope our favorite artists will do?-- but it's just that I made an assertion that, after careful research and contemplation, was clearly wrong.

On Rockin' the Suburbs, singer/songwriter/pianist/observer Ben Folds has jettisoned two-thirds of his excellent guitar-free power-pop band, Ben Folds Five, and gone solo. (And Rockin' the Suburbs is about as solo as it gets, too-- Folds plays most of the instruments and wrote every last one of the songs.)

SLIDE 2: sara, spelled without an "h", was getting bored
on a peavey amp in 1984
while zak without a "c" tried out some new guitars
playing sara with no "h"'s favorite song


I miss The Five. I do. I miss the musical tautness, the wry wit, the braid-tight harmonies. It's slightly disconcerting, yes, to know that, as long as BFF's hiatus remains imposed, Ben Folds probably won't release anything as musically exuberant as "Jackson Cannery" or "One Angry Dwarf..". And yet, listening to Rockin' the Suburbs, it's hard to complain. My biggest beef with Ben Folds Five was the same complaint that everyone else had-- Folds's lyrics, while very funny and intelligent, smacked a bit of the too-sour "you're-not-on-the-same-wavelength-as-me" verbosity that can prove a dangerous stumbling block for clever indie-pop.

On Rockin' the Suburbs, Folds remains witty and intelligent, but he's less of a hyper-literate smart-aleck than an atypically observant and poignant story-songwriter. Folds has always, of course, included characters in his songs, but nowhere were they ever as fleshed out and real as this-- these are real people, not caricatures. Emphasis remains squarely on Folds's (improving) vocals and piano acrobatics, but now he's not using his piano for indie-rock-- he's using it for 70's-like AM-radio pop. And, oddly enough, that's cool.

SLIDE 3: good morning son
i am a bird
wearing a brown polyester shirt
you want a coke?
maybe some fries?
the roast beef combo's only nine ninety-five..

In fact, it's _very_ cool. Not detached-hip cool, but genuinely cool, the kind of cool that emanates when an artist is comfortable enough with himself to be genuine _and_ show off his flagrant God-given talent, all at the same time. Each track tells some sort of story-- sometimes it's a story without a beginning or an end, although sometimes both are clearly-defined and concise. And sometimes it's amusing and sometimes it's sad and sometimes it's bitter, but Folds gives his characters real characteristics and, in most cases, actual names.

And the music is glorious. Folds plays the piano as if his hands were on fire and the keys were flame-retardent, and we all knew that, but who knews that he was so great at arranging and producing as well? Rockin' the Suburbs is truly Ben's baby, almost entirely engineered, performed, and written by himself. Sure, we miss Darren Jesse and Robert Sledge, but if he had to ditch them to get this good, so be it.

SLIDE 4: i know that you went straight to someone else
while i worked through all this shiit here by myself
and i think that you should spend some time alone
but if you won't, then you won't
and i will consider you gone..

Some people you'll meet in Rockin' the Suburbs:

Annie: An aging bachelorette, Annie worries about growing old and dying alone. The clock ticks as the narrator pines from afar: "Annie waits... but not for me." ("Annie Waits")

Sara: A 1984 youth, bored to tears waiting for her boyfriend Zak to stop fooling around in the guitar shop, has a vision of post-millenial rave culture. ("Zak and Sara")

Stan: A former hippy, Stan realizes with some chagrin that he's the very same "Man" that he railed against as a youth. ("The Ascent of Stan")

There's more, of course. But giving away more would, in this case, be kinda-like telling you what happens in the final chapter of the book-- finding out for yourself is half the fun.

SLIDE 5: fred gets his paints out and goes to the basement
projecting some slides onto a plain white canvas
and traces it
fills in the spaces
he turns off the slides and it doesn't look right
yeah, and all of these bastards have taken his place
he's forgotten but not yet gone

Perhaps the most tragic of these characters is Fred Jones. A lifelong staple at the local newspaper, Fred is unceremoniously jettisoned from his job via forced retirement. A pretty piano-and-strings piece, "Fred Jones Part 2" is the album's emotional core-- and it hits a poignant peak when Cake's John McCrea, of all people, joins in on harmony.

And that's what Rockin' the Suburbs is-- it's a series of snapshots, essentially. It's a suburban slideshow; a series of ruminations on everyday life.

SLIDE 6: pangs of silence from the room upstairs
how's the view there?
do you read what they're saying about you?
that you're no fun since the war was won?
in fact, you have become
all of the things you've always run from

SLIDE 7: black tears are falling and she won't say what i've done
she's sitting here beside me and she is gone
black tears are falling falling
losing lisa and there's nothing i can do

Like good literature, Folds's songs endear us to a particular set of characters. Sometimes Folds is an observer of their behavior-- sometimes Folds is playing the character. "Losing Lisa" observes as Folds loses the girl-- but to a piano-led tune so spunky and Monkees-like that grief is sufficiently masked by harmony and music. "Carrying Cathy," alternately, hints at a morbid, sardonic humor, as the narrator imagines himself as a pallbearer at an ex-flame's funeral, but the music-- classicist in nature with a few operatic trills to punctuate-- is serious, even dramatic.

SLIDE 8: i woke up sad from this dream i've been having
the last couple nights or so
with her father, her brothers
we're all at the funeral
carrying a box through the rain
and somebody says, "yeah, it's always been this way"
there was always someone carrying cathy

SLIDE 9: you've seen them drop like flies from the bright sunny skies
they come knocking at your door with this look in their eyes
you've got one good trick and you're hanging on
you're hanging on to it

It's the title track where Ben Folds really caters to his old audience; "Rockin' the Suburbs" packages suburban angst and white-boy faux-posturing into a goofy, cheeky, satirical synth-rock single. Alt-rock's moodiness and corporate paranoia are given equal skewerings, all culminating in a Korn-esque breakdown. It doesn't fit into the musical scheme of the album, no, but thematically i think it fits perfectly. Throughout Rockin' the Suburbs Ben Folds has offered us exactly what the title threatens: brief glimpses of suburban life, all told from a keen insider's perspective and within the four-minute pop song format. And as a track, "Rockin' the Suburbs"-- which most reviewers make a point of telling you sticks out like a sore thumb-- does just that; except it offers more humour than pathos, and establishes the Hulk inside of Ben's Bruce Banner-- the representation of misplaced and stifled rage, yearnin' to break free. Invigorating.

SLIDE 10: in a haze these days
i pull up to the stoplight
i can feel that something's not right
i can feel that someone's blasting me with hate and bass
sending dirty vibes my way
'cause my great great great great grandad
made someone's great great great great grandaddy slaves
it wasn't my idea
just drove to the store... for some preparation h

SLIDE 11: lucretia walks into a room
because she does
it's not the same room
the one she wanted to be in
she says, "everywhere i go, damn, there i am"..

The music of Rockin' the Suburbs darts about with a moderate air of schizophrenia; piano ballads are the likely accepted norm, but Folds also retreats to stuff like modernized doo-wop (the fantastic "Gone") and guitar-rock ("Rockin' the Suburbs," "Not the Same") and even... I dunno, piano-trance-rock? (whatever "the Ascent of Stan" is.)

In this, Folds manages a lot of arrangement and production coups, and a lot of falsetto, but he also manages to squeeze his best-ever love song in right there at the end-- and, quite possibly, one of the best love songs ever written. It is my hope that the simple, elegant, and unbelievably beautiful "the Luckiest" will one day be Ben Folds's calling card as a balladeer-- I can't imagine a more plaintive or, quite frankly, touching love song.

SLIDE 12: next door, there's an old man who lived into his nineties
and one day passed away in his sleep
and his wife, she stayed for a couple of days and passed away
i'm sorry, i know that's a strange way to tell you that i know we belong
that i know
that i am... the luckiest.

It's quite fitting, then, that Folds should end on such a note. The eleven tracks that precede it find the narrator-- or some character-- dissatisfied, disgruntled, dis-something-or-other. But in "the Luckiest," the narrator-- the same narrator, i like to think-- can still roll over and look at his woman day after day, and think to himself that, despite everything else in his piissed-off, uptight, white-bred existence, he's still the luckiest guy in his particular sector of suburbia.

And isn't that just kind of beautiful, when you think about it?

END OF SLIDE

Sure, Rockin' the Suburbs might not stack up to other Ben Folds records in terms of snazziness or cool, detached wit. But he's managed to find the profound truths _and_ great music in everyday life, even in Suburban Hell.

Let's see Quiet Riot do THAT.



**


REFERENCE:

BEN FOLDS FIVE: Whatever and Ever Amen








Recommended: Yes