It might seem like Ben Folds’s solo career has been around forever, but Way To Normal is just the North Carolinian’s third album without his scaffold, Ben Folds Five. The mere fact that the ‘five’ were actuality a trio attests to the 42-year-old’s completely idiosyncratic sense of humour – a quality which has made him one of the most well-respected writers of pop music over the past fifteen years. The facetious manner in which this album was recorded is a tell-tale sign of its whimsicality, too – with a ‘day to kill in Dublin’, Folds recorded a whole album of ‘fake’ songs, to purposely leak to fans who thought they’d laid their hands on the real deal.
It’s still that loveable eccentricity that drives Ben Folds releases. A writer of incisive, fantastically witty songs, and a master of melody and tone, Way To Normal is also lyrically brilliant – choice cuts include the droll ‘Bitch Went Nuts’ and ‘Free Coffee’’s “And when I was broke I needed it more/But now that I’m rich, they give me coffee”.
Musically, though, there’s no great departure here. Blithe piano-pop is Folds’s forté, and he executes it magnificently – especially on the ‘Benny And The Jets’-esque ‘Hiroshima’, the classic pop-meets-college rock of ‘Errant Dog’ and forlorn closing ballad ‘Kylie From Connecticut’. It’s doubtful that an absence of experimentation will bother fans, though; if nothing else, it’s proof positive that Ben Folds is still far from on his way to ‘normal’.