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ivan@stellysee.de
| From | "Mark Tate" <zumpp99@hotmail.com> |
| Subject | Re: Another one I missed in 2005... |
| Date | Sun, 08 Jan 2006 20:06:08 -0500 |
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Very well put...
>From: flalaw@aol.com
>Reply-To: audities@smoe.org
>To: audities@smoe.org
>Subject: Re: Another one I missed in 2005...
>Date: Sun, 08 Jan 2006 09:58:00 -0500
>
>It seems to me that most reviewers and fans who make the Folds reference do
>so as shorthand for piano-based pop in general, rather than the
>particularly smart-ass brand of it that Folds himself has been known to
>display. It's just that Folds has had the most commercial success in the
>genre, and therefore is most likely to be known to those being introduced
>to the artist being compared.
>
>Personally, I like Folds, although it's an album-to-album thing for me. I
>thought the Five's debut was one of the top albums of the 90s, the Whatever
>and Ever Amen followup (which produced "Brick", the song that put Folds on
>the map) uneven and insufferable in points, and the Reinhold Messner album
>even more so.
>
>Then, when he went solo, I found Rockin' The Suburbs a return to form of
>the first Ben Folds Five album (even if the title track was Folds at his
>most annoying, although perhaps it was self-parody), his interim EPs hit
>and miss, and his latest, Songs For Silverman, as a total dud as he tried
>*too* hard to be sincere and mature.
>
>It is kind of fitting that you mention the "thin line between being clever
>or silly vs being irritating or annoying"; I'm not sure anyone out there
>makes a habit of crossing it back and forth as much as Folds.
>
>Steve F
>
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