Concert Review: Ben Folds

When Ben Folds came to the Bank of America City Center (a formal euphemism for the Bank of America Skating Center when the puddles aren't freezing yet) on September 25th, his new album Way to Normal had yet to be released. Fans of the wise-ass piano pop craftsman expected a show filled with favorites from a career going strong in its second decade. When two multi-instrumentalists joined Folds' now familiar trio of Jared Reynolds on bass and Sam Smith on drums-would they focus on more highly produced efforts like "Narcolepsy" and "Prison Food"? The hardcore fans knew that just days before Folds reunited with his seminal 90's band Ben Folds Five for a one off concert-would he be treating us to a set of oldies?
Both theories would be proven wrong rather quickly as Ben played nothing but new material for more than an hour. It came not only from the upcoming album, but also from a "fake" version, which the band wrote and recorded on a lark in Europe to confuse fans with multiple songs sharing titles. The crowd gave a warm welcome, however, despite two versions of "Free Coffee", "Brainwascht", and others. The new material totally abandons the maturity of Rockin' The Suburbs and Songs for Silverman in favor of the tossed off fun of his recent EP tracks and 90's fan favorites. Highlights of this first set were the first single "You Don't Know Me", which worked well even with Jared Reynolds covering Regina Speckter's parts and "Hiroshima" which included an always crowd pleasing chorus of "oh oh oh oh".
A too short encore included "Underground", "Landed", "Not the Same", and "Rockin' the Suburbs" besides the concluding fake version of "The Frown Song". The encore mainly served to illustrate in high contrast how middling some of the new material was in comparison with his best work, but left the crowd pleased, if wanting a little more.