Maturity can be a damning word. When I hear that a band has “matured,” it usually implies that they’ve either gone soft, hired a hack producer to squeeze every last ounce of creativity out, or discovered the sounds of India and the far east and incorporated them every which way into their music.
Solo artists mature similarly. Maybe without the hack producer or the sounds of sitars and tabla, but the subject matter can easily turn towards family life. It’s almost a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation; Trent Reznor is critiqued for NOT maturing, while one can argue that Ben Folds matured too quickly in his solo career.
“Songs for Silverman”, Folds’ second solo album, doesn’t include nearly as many character studies as the character-laden “Rockin’ the Suburbs.” There is an overall sweetness about this album, although it sometimes borders on bitersweetness. “You can’t fool me I saw you when you came out / You’ve got your mamma’s taste but you got my mouth,” begins “Gracie”, an ode to his young daughter. In “Trusted”, Folds sings, “The sun’s coming up/ She’s pulling all the blankets over / Curled in a ball Like she’s hiding from me and / That’s when I know She’s gonna be pissed when she wakes up / For terrible things I did to her in her dreams.”
“Landed,” the album’s first single, is classic Folds, sounding as if it could be a left-over from the days of the Five. But unlike the rest of Folds’ ouevre, “Silverman” plays out in a more resigned manner. His chops are as refined as ever, evident on the early rock-out “You To Thank”. Of note is “Late” his tribute to Elliot Smith, a singer-songwriter who stayed in the same dingy back rooms in the same circuits that Folds played. In the most touching song on the album, he sings:
Under some dirty words
On a dirty wall
Eating take-out by myself
I played the shows
Got back in the van and put the walkman on
And you were playing
In some other dive a thousand miles away
I played a thousand times before
And like pathetic stars
The truck stops and the rock club walls
I always knew
You saw them too
But you never will again
And with that, we realize what Folds does best. He connects. He wasn’t just an acquaintence of Smith, but fan, just like us. Ben Folds’ ability to depict life through song is his greatest skill. With “Rockin’ The Suburbs” we realized that he didn’t NEED the Five, although their explosive personality perfectly augmented his. But the solo Folds isn’t about explosions. It isn’t about angst. It’s about realizing your place in the whole shebang, and accepting it, warts and all. This is not to say that “Songs For Silverman” is a perfect album. It has its highlights, it has its “OK” moments, and it does sort of peter out towards the end. Such is life, I guess. I just hope that this album is not a microcosm of his recording career. He may be maturing, but he’s maturing WITH us.
