7.08.2008

Ben Folds Announces New Album

Everyone’s favorite Dre covering, blue streak swearing, piano-rocking rock star Ben Folds has a new album hitting record store shelves Sept. 16.

Way To Normal
is Folds' first studio LP since 2005’s Songs For Silverman and will be released on Epic Records. Though Folds has played some high-profile shows over the past couple years from opening for John Mayer to being backed by a symphony orchestra, the new album is still an unashamedly rock and roll record.


“It’s a fairly un-orchestral record,” Folds told Paste magazine in a recent interview. Folds continued, “It’s a fairly lyric-driven rock record. We’ve looked at taking a few of the songs on the new record and scoring them for orchestra and, uh, it was kind of slim pickins.”

Notable tracks include titled “You Don’t Know Me”, an eccentric duet with Regina Spektor (is there any other kind)? Also on the album, a experiment that hearkens back to Fear of Pop called “Free Coffee” on which Folds gets an electronic effect on his trusty piano by taping Altoids cans to the strings and running it through a distortion pedal.

Folds’ trademark irreverence is still in full effect on several tunes includin “Bitch Went Nuts,” which tells the story of a relationship that went wildly wrong after the song's narrator’s lover goes crazy and stabs his basketball. The song, according to Folds, is a comment on relationships from the male point of view. Says Folds, “If you ask loads of women what went wrong in a relationship, they’re going to give you a variety of answers. But you ask men, especially at a bar somewhere, and they’re gonna go, ‘Uh, bitch went nuts!’”

Check out tour dates here.

MP3: Ben Folds: Such Great Heights (Postal Service cover)

4 comments:

KBO said...

Why will he never visit STL? Still pumped about the album.

MBD said...

He was here last year with John Mayer. The only problem was that, in order to see Ben you had to buy John Mayer tix.

KBO said...

Which I would never do. Thinking about being in the audience at a John Mayer show (particularly one at the amphitheater) makes me want to vomit.

I saw him at Waka, I'm good.

Sarathan said...

Hi,

I love what I've read on your blog, and I'm totally on the same page as you regarding John Mayer. (But that's just my opinion.)

I think you might take a liking to Peter Bradley Adams or Two Loons for Tea. Here are links to two free downloads offered by their label:

http://sarathan.com/free/peterbradleyadams/ http://www.sarathan.com/free/twoloonsfortea/

Thanks for sharing the music!

-Kara

P.S. Email me at kara@sarathan if you want to talk music!