shilmafone's Full Review: Sunny 16 [EP] by Ben Folds
The Dangers of Oversaturation
Impatient readers might want to skip down a few paragraphs, because I start on a rather long tangent here right off the bat.
People who are confused and disturbed enough to read my reviews on a regular basis have likely heard, at least in passing, of art/noise artists Merzbow and Nurse With Wound. A brief primer for those who haven't: Merzbow is a Japanese noise artist with a predilection for mixing the violent and the sexual, and Nurse With Wound is an artist often associated with shilmafone favorites Coil, who makes music that could only be categorized as uncategorizable. What do Merzbow and Nurse With Wound have in common? They both have a tendency for saturating the world with product, to the point where even their biggest fans are forced to pick and choose the releases that they want to spend their hard-earned money on. Nurse With Wound has put out upward of 50 albums (including remasters and reduxes of old material) since they began in 1979 with Chance Meeting On a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella. No less than five Nurse With Wound releases and re-releases were thrown at the public in 2003 alone. Merzbow is legendary for releasing anything he records, and to my knowledge, nobody on the web even purports to have a complete listing of his recordings. One needs only to mention the 50(!)-CD Merzbox in the presence of knowledgeable underground music fans, and a debate breaks out as to whether it's a brilliant artistic statement or the ultimate form of self-indulgent musical wankery.
And that leads to my point in telling you all this: Releasing gobs and gobs of music can both be a blessing and a curse. On one hand, there's rarely a wait to hear new music from these artists, and even if you've got all the new stuff, chances are that there's something from their backcatalogue you could seek out and fall in love with just as easily. It's nice being able to know when you love an artist that you'll likely always be able to find something they've released that you haven't heard yet. On the other hand, releasing that volume of music all but guarantees that the quality of the music released is being diluted. Trent Reznor may take five years between albums, but you certainly know that he's put every ounce of his life force into those albums and you're getting everything he's got to give. If you're getting something new every month, it's as if the artist is saying "here's a bunch of stuff, you're bound to like some of it," and while there might be brilliant stuff hidden in there, chances are much of it is throwaway that should never have seen the light of day in the first place.
Sunny 16 - The Actual Review
Those who've read any of the reviews of Speed Graphic, Ben Folds' previous EP, probably know where I'm going with this. You see, Mr. Ben has a plan to release three EPs of songs he's recorded recently, one every two months. Speed Graphic was a pleasant, if not exactly groundbreaking set of five songs that's entertained me since I got it. Much of the charm that comes from it may be due to the fact that one song is a cover and three of the four non-cover songs are the final realizations of songs up to thirteen years old--there's been some time to refine them into something worth releasing. The recently-released second EP, Sunny 16, contains no less than four songs Ben has written recently, plus another cover. Unfortunately, the quality of this new material is far less consistent than what appeared on Speed Graphic, and much of it leaves me wishing there was more to it.
Sunny 16 starts with the losers' anthem "There's Always Someone Cooler Than You", which is something like Ben's own "One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces" run through a Reinhold Messner blender. With an insistent, repetitive piano line and some synths that really add little to the song, it gets by on some nifty chord progressions in the chorus. The shout of NERDS GONE WILD! at the end is a nice touch, but it doesn't quite push the song into Ben Folds Classic territory--it's just a little lazy for that. Continuing the unwieldy song title trend is "You've Got to Learn to Live With What You Are", which is more or less a rewrite of "Lean On Me". Using the tried and true Ben Folds Five formula of piano, bass, and drums (and precisely two voices of background vocals courtesy of John Mark Painter), the song sounds just like a Ben Folds Five reject that never made an album for its lack of personality. The motivational lyrics are nice, but otherwise, you likely won't remember it five minutes after you hear it.
"All You Can Eat" is nice, and I like Ben's comments on the problems with society today, but again, it just sounds a little lazy. The piano's pretty though. It's a little awkward, though, as the whole song is based around the line they give no f*ck (which apparently was the original title of the song). Here's a sample:
So I'm lookin' at all the people in this restaurant
What do you think they weigh
And out the window to the parking lot
At their SUV's, taking all of the space
They give no f*ck
Talk as loud as they want
They give no f*ck
Just as long as there's enough for them.
Cute, but there's not a lot of charm to it, just profanity.
"Rock Star" takes its place as the Ben Folds Character Sketch of the EP, but it takes some looking for. Basically, it's the tale of an ex-friend giving the people what they want and leaving the narrator behind. It's a bitter letter to the "rock star", and there's not a lot of charm to this song either--just a lot of smirking bitterness wrapped in a swing beat that's about the same speed as "You've Got To Learn To Live With Song Titles That Are Way Too Long". Finally, there's the nifty cover of The Divine Comedy's "Songs of Love". It's a waltz with a swing beat, and some strings are added to the pianos, and it's a lovely little piece that makes me feel like ballroom dancing. Most days it's my favorite song on the disc.
And that's it.
I almost wish there was a reason for me to hate Sunny 16, but there's not. I really wish there was a reason for me to love Sunny 16, but that's not here either. This EP just feels like an artist on autopilot, putting out product for the sake of putting out product. It's still hard to fault Ben for what he's trying to do here, but it's getting easier. At nine bucks per five-song EP, we're going to get fifteen songs for almost thirty bucks, and then an album next year. Personally, I'm glad that I have these EPs, as they're bound to become Ben Folds collectors items when they go out of print. Strictly musically, however, I almost kinda wish Ben had just waited for the release of his new album, an album that he could have spent all the time he wanted on and put his life into, rather than writing and releasing these songs almost immediately. There's something to be said for the evolution of a song, and these are songs that haven't had the chance to go through that process yet. It's a shame, because every single one of them has the potential to be great--they're just not there yet.
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