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Everybody’s favorite piano-rocking, Shatner-collaborating, sailor-mouthed goofball Ben Folds has a new album hitting shelves on Sept. 16. Way To Normal, the singer’s first new studio LP since 2005’s Songs For Silverman, is produced by Dennis Herring (Counting Crows, Modest Mouse, Elvis Costello) and will be released on Epic Records.
Even though Folds has played some high-profile shows over the past couple years backed by a full symphony orchestra (he’s scheduled to perform with the Nashville Symphony on Sept. 7 to open its 2008-09 Pops season) the new record is still unabashedly rock.
“It’s a fairly un-orchestral record,” Folds tells Paste. “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 a quirky duet with Regina Spektor called “You Don’t Know Me” and a glitchy sonic experiment called “Free Coffee” on which Folds gets a crackling faux-electronic effect by taping Altoids cans to the strings of his acoustic grand piano and running that sound through a distortion pedal.
The cheeky irreverence that’s become Folds’ trademark is still on full display in tunes like “Bitch Went Nuts,” which tells the fictional story of a relationship that went south after the narrator’s lover goes psycho and stabs his basketball. According to Folds, the song is a comment on the male perspective. “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!’”
Considering Folds’ penchant for fun-loving shenanigans, have any fellow artists or friends urged him to grow up?
“No, luckily I have a loyal team of yes men. And whatever I say is just the fucking shit. No, that’s not true at all. What I do have is a few good friends and people that I work with who are really happy when I’m having a good time with something.”
Click here to read Jason Killingsworth's full Q&A with Folds.
Related links:
Cover Story: Ben Folds Outgrows the Industry of Cool
BenFolds.com
Ben Folds on MySpace
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YESSSSSSSSSSSS
Visit dorg online to read exclusive posts from Ben Folds as well as reminisce on the time Frally posted.
"Way to Normal"...cool album title.
http://www.benfolds.org
The most up-to-date Ben Folds site on the web. More hits than the official site!
if you actually still like ben folds you might want to vist http://www.thesuburbs.org.uk instead.
@Mark Yonner
That website say the most recent Ben Folds news is from fall of 2007. Most up to date my ass.
Woohoo - this is great news. Can't wait. Been too long. And Ben - come back over to London sometime soon.
Cheers,
James
benfolds.org is basically a bunch of arrogant cliquey tossers who don't actually like Ben Folds anymore, they spend all day feeling clever and smug making "witty" comments, avoid.
Is anyone else able to get to the full Q&A? I keep getting a 502 proxy error. :-/
hey y'all
benfolds.org is ok. i like their sense of humor. they're a little more clever than most of the sites out there that spend their time doing nothing but smooching my cheeks. which feels great, by the way, so i'm not going to complain too much.
anyways. just wanted to resolve this little debate. i really probably shouldn't be on here anyway. i'll let CEC know.
thanks guys. take care
ben
ben pls tell your mom to stop changing back our wikipedia edits. you know they're funny.
Thanks for the heads-up, You Betcha. Link should be fixed now. Let us know if it still doesn't work for you.
Hello friends. Richard Dorg here, creator of BenFolds.org. I'm sorry for all the animosity that my site has caused. I never meant it to do any harm, especially to you, Ben. I'm glad you appreciate our humour though. Take care all.
so excited for the new record! can't wait!
So cool!!!!!
Ben come back to Kalamazoo, Michigan!
hey paste, just an fyi; a ben folds fan club mailing went out saying that the release date is actually the 30th of September.
and i loled at that "ben" post. nice fake, except that he's not with CEC anymore.
Can't wait to hear the new album!!!
Please come back to Kalamazoo, Michigan!
I second that, MAN LAW BEN