In the entire brief history of writing about rock and roll, has there ever been a writer who failed to dream at least once of the opportunity to write lyrics that an admired artist could then turn into songs?<\/p>\n
Yeah, I don\u2019t think so, either.\u00a0 It just kind of comes with the territory.<\/p>\n
Of course, if you\u2019re Nick-freaking-Hornby, one of the wisest, wittiest, and best-selling writers-about-music in that brief history of our peculiar little niche, you might just get the chance to live the dream. Still, it would take a truly fearless musical savant, a smartass of the first order who genuinely doesn\u2019t give a shit what anyone thinks, and has already proven he\u2019ll try pretty much anything in the name of musical invention, to attempt such a thing\u2014and Ben \u201cWilliam Shatner is an undiscovered musical genius\u201d Folds is just the guy to pull it off.<\/p>\n
So neither courage nor talent are a problem. Compatibility? Well, Hornby and Folds\u2019 sensibilities are certainly aligned\u2014ironic yet insightful, acidic one moment and sentimental the next\u2014but there are still no guarantees when the guy writing the words is used to arranging them on a page rather than matching them to music. You can feel Folds working harder than he would normally need to on some of these tracks, trying to find a melodic pattern that will not just line up with, but embellish and bring to life Hornby\u2019s words.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
But when it works\u2014as on the superb opening duo of \u201cA Working Day\u201d and \u201cPicture Window\u201d\u2014it\u2019s faintly astonishing. Readers familiar with Hornby\u2019s skill at balancing insouciantly self-deprecating humor with wickedly sharp insights into human frailty will literally hear his voice become Folds\u2019. The effect for a fan of both (i.e. someone like me) is sort of like a sci-fi fan sitting down for a summit meeting between Spock and Obi-Wan Kenobi\u2026 you want to meet the moment on its own terms, but the little voice in your head just keeps repeating \u201cWowowowow.\u201d <\/p>\n
Opener \u201cA Working Day\u201d is as autobiographical as they come, a bouncy, snarky ode to the writing life, full of self-doubt, recrimination and petty anger at the self-appointed arbiters of taste who fuel them. \u201cSome guy on the \u2019net thinks I suck \/ And he should know\u2014he\u2019s got his own blog\u201d goes the capper to this 1:49 firecracker of a song.<\/p>\n
Just as you\u2019re finishing up chuckling, \u201cPicture Window\u201d kicks you in the gut with the gorgeously rendered story of a spouse who checks her gravely ill husband into the hospital on New Year\u2019s Eve and struggles not to let the fireworks raise her hopes too much because \u201cYou know what hope is? Hope is a bastard \/ Hope is a liar, a cheat and a tease \/ Hope comes near you, kick its backside \/ Hope got no place in days like these.\u201d<\/p>\n
Damn.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a tough act to follow\u2026 so why not do so with the highly topical gamble \u201cLevi Johnston\u2019s Blues,\u201d in which Hornby extends his notable empathy to the 18-year-old self-described redneck who, unfortunately for any hopes he might have had of a normal life, \u201cknocked up the VP nominee\u2019s daughter.\u201d Like much of Hornby\u2019s best work, the song plays it cool, forgoing the temptation to editorialize in favor of a deadpan matter-of-factness. It\u2019s a novelty, but a surprisingly tender one.<\/p>\n
Up next, \u201cDoc Pomus\u201d is a nifty biographical story-song about the wheelchair-bound early \u201960s songwriter that nonetheless finds Folds stretching and twisting his melodies to try to match the difficult cadence of Hornby\u2019s words. Folds\u2019 genius as an arranger shows up here (among other places), as he adds a single horn to the chorus that provides exactly the subtle texture needed for maximum emotional impact.<\/p>\n
From there, the best of the rest would primarily consist of the three songs with girls\u2019 names in the titles (interesting, that).<\/p>\n
\u201cPractical Amanda\u201d is the sort of ode to one\u2019s wonderful mate\u2014Hornby\u2019s, as he states in the liner notes\u2014that you wondered if Folds would ever be capable of writing again after the bitter divorce that preceded the uber-snarky Way To Normal<\/i>. We don\u2019t know the answer to that yet, but we do know that, with Hornby supplying the words, Folds is still capable of singing his heart out in convincing fashion.<\/p>\n
In the case of \u201cClaire\u2019s Ninth,\u201d Hornby indicates in the liner notes that the lyric is not just a story-song, but a lyric lifted from the bones of the first short story he ever sold, which has never been published\u2014though it\u2019s now been sung. It\u2019s about young Claire and her recently-divorced parents trying to make it through her ninth birthday celebration, and it\u2019s both wonderfully perceptive and moving in Hornby\u2019s devastatingly direct way: \u201cI wish you could see \/ Right inside us \/ There\u2019s all this stuff \/ The best of us \/ That we can\u2019t get to.\u201d And later: \u201cYou\u2019re the best of us \/ The most of us \/ You\u2019re what we were \/ You\u2019re all that\u2019s left.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Before we get to closer \u201cBelinda,\u201d a few notes on some of the songs that work less well.\u00a0 \u201cYour Dogs\u201d is a funny bit about the worst neighbor ever, where Hornby\u2019s words again test to the limit Folds\u2019 ability to make these lines sing like lyrics. The lounge-y \u201cPassword\u201d tries too hard to be clever; you admire the way Folds solved the puzzle of the lyric, but he needn\u2019t have bothered.\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s a fine line between entertaining and just plain odd, and this time, Hornby ended up on the wrong side of it.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
\u201cFrom Above\u201d is an interesting case, a sad rumination on the hopelessness of searching for that one soulmate we\u2019ve been trained to believe is out there, that the ever-contrarian Folds gives an adventurous, sassy feel. It feels off to me, but then I\u2019m a romantic at heart. As for \u201cSaskia Hamilton,\u201d writing an entire song about a \u201ceuphonious\u201d name is a fairly nutty thing to do, which makes it fitting that Folds gives it a nutty, hyperactive arrangement. But it\u2019s one of those cases where, ironically, the cadence is so awkward that the whole thing ends up more cacophonous than euphonious.<\/p>\n
And then \u201cBelinda\u201d arrives to save the day. A wonderful Russian puzzle doll of a composition, it\u2019s a song about a song about a woman the songwriter once loved, and wrote a song for, which turned into his biggest hit, which he\u2019s had to sing every night for decade after decade gone by since he left the woman the song is about. (Hmm\u2026 \u201cLayla,\u201d anyone?) The song is that perfect Folds\/Hornby balance of self-aware irony and genuine empathy for a guy who is forced to relive the greatest regret of his personal life every night of his professional one.<\/p>\n
The 30-second snippet of an alternate take of \u201cBelinda\u201d that follows at the very close does make you wonder how many versions Folds tried out for each of these songs before settling on the final ones. And that\u2019s what this album is really about in the end for me. Lonely Avenue<\/i> delivers several interesting and worthwhile songs, but at least for me, what\u2019s at least as interesting is the opportunity to observe the creative processes of writer and songwriter colliding before your ears. Something short of a masterpiece, Lonely Avenue<\/i> is nonetheless a fascinating and often compelling creative odyssey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":30490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8643],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-42155","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-ben-folds-nick-hornby","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42155"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}