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Posted Tuesday 18th September 2012 at 3.44pm
Speed graphic
Ben Folds Five's new album is out today! Here's a review that I largely agree with. One line,
One of BFF’s greatest legacies was to have excavated the piano as the rock instrument that it both can be and should be.
reminded me of one of my favourite descriptions of BFF's debut, from The war on silence:
Tori Amos plays the piano like her nerves are woven into the strings, and that's remarkable, but Ben Folds plays the piano like it's a six-month-old puppy on speed that he's somehow trained to jump ninety feet straight up in the air to catch the frisbees of the gods, and that's remarkable in another way. Tori's playing is Expressiveness, while Folds' piano sounds like the hyperactive Muse of Melody, come to Earth to remind us what the word "frolic" was invented for, perhaps because the other Muses were about ready to strangle her. It doesn't even sound like he's actually playing the music; it doesn't seem like he could. The piano must be generating it itself, and Folds is just shaping and directing by pounding on the soundboard and flailing inspiringly at the sides of the thing.
New album:
Old school:
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