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Ben Folds performed nearly every song off his new album - and a few from the intentionally leaked B-side - at his concert Saturday night, but left little room for his older hits.

Ben Folds, with a new twist

By: John Bailey

Posted: 9/29/08

Being a touring artist has to be a real pain sometimes, especially if you're doing a new album tour. Chances are, 90 percent of the audience really only wants to hear your old stuff. And you can cater to them a bit, but man, you just wrote all this music, and someone's going to listen to it. Why go on tour if you're just going to play the same thing that you played last tour?

Because the stuff you played last tour was fantastic.

Unfortunately, what went on in the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts Saturday night was not.

The show opened with Folds and his band (Sam Smith on drums, Jared Reynolds on bass and Andrew Higley on "everything") blasting through the chintzy operatics of "Way to Normal," a song which has the same title as Folds' upcoming album but is not, in fact, on the album. As they played, rushing images and light-show theatrics adorned the back of the stage: angelic blue figures, Sauron-esque burning eyes and giant spinning skeletons.

Huh? Is this Ben Folds, or is this the Queen musical?

"The graphics were a little gratuitous," said Lisa DelCegno, a 1st-semester theater studies major. "And the lighting - the whole thing was really unnecessary."

"I will explain," said Folds, a few songs later. Apparently, after finishing the new album, he wrote, composed and produced a second album - a "fake" version of "Way to Normal," created in a single day, and "leaked" intentionally by Folds.

And then Folds played a whole bunch of it, live, for us. Thanks, maybe.

Again, if he wants to play new stuff, that's great. We can only hear "Brick" so many times. But going out, telling the audience that he basically made all this stuff up in five minutes, and then making us sit through it - was that just narcissism? Was he trying to say something ironic about concertgoers there? A big joke about the music industry? The goofy projected images combined with the flimsy "fake" material made the first half of the show feel as if Folds were just making fun of the audience. Adding insult to injury, the projectors blocked an awful lot of the stage for anyone on the margins of the crowd.

The actual new material -- the stuff that's really going to be released on "Way to Normal" -- was better, though not fantastic. The journalistic "Effington" was a standout, getting some laughs from the audience and ending with a trademark Folds piano-smashing solo accompanied by frantic toms.

On the other hand, the bombastic atmosphere of the concert was unkind to "You Don't Know Me," Folds' collaboration with Regina Spektor, which lost most of the fragile, quirky charm of the album version. Spektor's absence didn't help, either.

"I did like 'You Don't Know Me'," said Genevieve Flock, a 1st-semester environmental science major. "It was good, but not as good without Regina. The new stuff didn't impress me that much."

The instrumentation of the concert was a far cry from the "Ben Folds and a piano" days: two auxiliary percussionists played tambourines, glockenspiels, synthesizers and more, while Folds sparked up "Free Coffee" by throwing Altoid cans in his piano and adding a distortion pedal.

And during "The Frown Song," the auxiliary percussionists grabbed keytars and donned giant frowny-face masks, in another move that, while a fun attention-grabber, felt a like a flimsy distraction from the music.

Folds seemed to be drawing a sharp line between his old and new material, with about three-quarters of the set being nonstop old stuff. And while the audience did enjoy the new songs, when the band came back onstage and rolled into "Zak and Sara," one could feel the wave of joy rolling through the auditorium. He played "Philosophy" with the delightful "Misrlou" tacked on, he gave a shout-out to Missy Higgins in "Rockin' the Suburbs," and he directed in audience in three-part harmony in "Not the Same." All classics, but there were so many more just asking to be played -- would it really have been so much to replace the "fake" songs with some older real ones?

And that chunk of the show was one hell of a good time -- everyone was on their feet, belting all the lyrics at the top of their lungs, and the dumb projectors were turned off. But it was painfully short, and in a confusing decision, Folds closed the show with the fake version of "Frown Song," deflating a lot of the good vibes the audience had been riding after the joyous "Not the Same."

Opening act Missy Higgins was enjoyable, if a tiny bit formulaic in her attitude towards slightly rockin' girl-folk.

"She sounds like Michelle Branch," said Jess O'Neill, a 7th-semester English major. "If Michellle Branch rocked out, ever."

Standouts "Peachy" and "Ten Days" worked a healthy dose of energy into the crowd and got some raucous cheers, and upon reflection, her honest, upbeat attitude onstage was absolutely pleasant compared to Folds' heady irony.

In the end, the worst part of the show were the fake tracks. And while it's obviously a joke -- Folds has always been firmly tongue-in-cheek -- the humor felt a little bitter, almost a little mean. We came to see Ben play -- we didn't come to hear his aded complaints about the music industry or dry wit about rock concerts. And when he plays, he plays so damn well.