At this point, those of us that are charter members of the Ben Folds Appreciation Society -- known, of course, as BFAS, or "beef ass" -- are well aware that there are precisely two niches that the music-listening populace at large will funnel our beloved piano-man into. These are, by way of quick, vague summary: (1.) mopey singer-songwriter (a generalization made by those who remember Ben Folds Five's breakthrough "Brick") and (2.) flippant creator of novelty tunes (those who remember "Brick" but also recall "Song For the Dumped" from the same album; _or_ those who were budding MTV2 addicts when "Rockin' the Suburbs" hit).

Of course, those of us in the know realize that our beloved Ben is neither of these. And yet, somehow, he's both; but it doesn't seem fair to pin him as a mopey singer-songwriter when he has plenty of ballads that are as intelligent and hopeful as "Brick" was sad, and as for "novelty," don't we all kind of hate that term when it's not being applied to Weird Al Yankovic? It's the Barenaked Ladies syndrome -- you don't have to dig much deeper than "One Week" to find the substance, but not many people want to put forth the effort. (A fact those of us in the Barenaked Appreciation Society -- known, of course, as BNAS, or "bean ass" -- have been lamenting since '98.)

Indeed, all that would be needed to refute Mr. Folds as a novelty songster would be a single listen to Rockin' the Suburbs, Ben's first solo album after dissolving his Five, crafted in the grand tradition of '70s pop, effectively sparking a zillion comparisons to Billy Joel and Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson, and justifying the whole damn lot of them. Songs For Silverman, the next album proper, isn't quite as good, but that's not a fair summary: it's serious and introspective and everything that seems to qualify a "good" singer-songwriter in the popular lexicon. More importantly, it's also more organic. It sounds like a reunion of his old power-pop trio, albeit with lyrics that position Folds squarely as all-growed-up. (Meaning no more "give me my money back, you bitch".)

Now here's the important part: somewhere in between, Ben Folds recorded another album.

More specifically, he recorded a batch of songs on the fly, and released them as such, in the form of three internet-only five-song EPs, staggered over the course of a couple of years: Speed Graphic, Sunny 16, and Super D. This batch of songs, Ben says, would have become his second studio album, if he hadn't (1) gotten sidetracked with other projects (indie-pop supergroup The Bens, production duties on William Shatner's fantastic Has Been) and (2) become fascinated with the prospect of recording music and making it, through the magic of the internet, directly to fans via the web.

As a card-carrying BFAS member, I liked the EPs -- well, two of them, at least, and I've reconciled myself to avoiding Super D, and due to its bite-sized stature, can regard it as a mere annoyance. Now, with the release of Supersunnyspeedgraphic: the LP, the best of these EPs, as well as the EP The Bens and the iTunes-only single "Batches Ain't Shat", are available in album form, cleaned up and re-arranged for public consumption. The bad news, of course, is that it's not truly a new Ben Folds release for those of us who own the EPs; the good news is Supersunnyspeedgraphic really does cobble together the very best tracks from the famed internet mini-releases.

Ben Folds himself claims that Supersunnyspeedgraphic is the album that he would have made in between Rockin' the Suburbs and Songs For Silverman if he hadn't released the EPs, but I have a hard time regarding this as an album proper when it contains so many songs by other people-- which, I suppose, other artists have done (I'm thinking Beatles and Stones on their early albums jacking Motown hits even though they were legendary songwriters), but given the quality of Folds' originals, it throws me. Still, there's something to be said about a piano-pounding cover of The Cure's "In Between Days" that bests the original by eliminating Robert Smith's distracting vocal tics from the mix; and the more said about a cover of "Songs of Love" that measures up to Neil Hannon's superlative original, the better -- and the mix here is even better than the embryonic, tinny (but still awesome) version of the rollicking ballad nestled at the end of Sunny 16, and eliminates the minute or so of random orchestral outro-ing that made Folds' first stab at the song difficult to worm onto mix cds. Of the four covers here, these two, the sincere ones, are the best -- the other two are cheeky and bid heavily for the Parental Advisory sticker Folds has won with this disc. Of these, "Batches Ain't Shat" is the better song -- the chamber-pop rendition of the Dre/Snoop song is dumb but at least features a pleasant vocal arrangement, albeit one that is jarring to hear married to "biitches ain't shiit but hoes and tricks/ lick on these nuts and suck the dick" -- "Get Your Hands Off My Woman" doesn't fare quite as well, partially because the Darkness original isn't particularly good to begin with, and partially because if I wanted to listen to Ben Folds squeal "motherfuucker," i'd listen to "Fired" from Rockin' the Suburbs, or at least insist that his next cover is of Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name".

Fortunately, Ben manages to showcase several superior originals here, most notably the fantastic tracks from Sunny 16, which manage to span the vast stylistic and tonal possiblities of Ben's repertoire. "All U Can Eat" is witty, albeit with a healthy dose of "piiss off", and a fantastic showcase for one-liners: "gonna get on the microphone down at Wal-Mart and talk about some shiit that's been on my mind"; "see that asshole with the peace sign on his license plate, giving me the finger and running me out of his lane?" It taps into the same suburban, middle-class, middle-aged sorta-angst that personified "Rockin' the Suburbs" and several of the more poignant tracks from its parent album, with a sort of sarcastic fatalism that's delicious despite relying on a silly line like "they give no fuuck" as a hook. "There's Always Someone Cooler Than You" is the spiritual successor to "One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces," a power-pop behemoth with a line like "yeah you're the shiit but you won't be it for long" for a hook, the natural precursor to Silverman's "Bastard" -- it's fascinating, I think, to see how these things piece together. The reflective, smart "Learn to Live With What You Are" is, quite simply, the big radio hit in some distant perfect dimension.

All this, of course, doesn't change the fact that many of these songs were dashed off in a pretty swift way. "Adelaide" sounds like it in particular; the second-weakest track off of the weakest of the three EPs (Super D, and in case you were wondering, "Get Your Hands Off My Woman" wins/loses), it's simply boring. Hookless, droning -- and ultimately harmless, but still. "Dog" from Speed Graphic is the same sort of deal. Super D's "Rent a Cop," however, fares better in this context -- I never took notice of it on its source, but on Supersunnyspeedgraphic, it jumps out from behind "Adelaide," shuffling along on a loping piano-and-brass groove for five sublime minutes that make you forget that Ben Folds is, indeed, somewhere in the mix, talking about setting asses on fire.

And I suppose the fact that you have this music already could be a con, but that hardly feels right, and what if you don't? Supersunnyspeedgraphic snags us by resequencing songs we've heard from different sources (and, in most cases, souping them up in a very noticeable way); and if you haven't heard the songs to begin with, believe me: these are the best songs from the EPs. (Except, of course, for the best song of the whole lot, "Give Judy My Notice," which originated on Speed Graphic and was the only song of the bunch to find its way onto Folds' second album, Songs For Silverman.) As the great lost Ben Folds studio album, it works: it listens more like a greatest-hits record than an actual album, of course, but that means that you get the best Ben has to offer, and that all of the ground that Mr. Folds is capable of covering is ably covered, and sometimes with strings and tricked-out production that make simple piano demos sound like "Tiny Dancer".

Just to be clear, that's a good thing.



Recommended: Yes