AR: Naked Baby Photos

Ben Folds Five - Naked Baby Photos (1998)

I'm not sure if this was actually culled for the sole purpose of fulfilling a recording contract - BFF only made it through three albums proper before calling it quits and sending BF on his suburb-rockin' way - but it sure sounds like it. A rag-tag bunch of rarities, it's primarily less-polished B-side type songs, less polished songs you already have copies of, and off-hand studio and concert onanism that is funny at first but gets old. This one should be carrying a label reading "Warning: Explicitly for Minutiae-Obsessed Fans."

Fortunately, I used to be a bit of a minutiae-obsessed fan, and though I've gotten tired enough of the BFF-shtick that I can't really tolerate a lot of the material on this album, I still have a soft spot for some of it. It's split into a front half that contains studio tracks and a back with live performances. The first is the early embryonic BFF piece "Eddie Walker" which showed that "Proper Noun" ballad was a formula they had working from the get-go. They back up the Name Game motif with "For the Benefit of Tom & Mary," a rollicker that got cut from their debut album. They also predict Folds's Rage Against the Machine parody in "Rockin' the Suburbs" with a screw-around piece called "For Those of Y'all Who Wear Fanny Packs" that actually contains some interesting cacophonous improv but is a little too repetitive / obnoxious to get the job done. The rest of Side A is filler or demos of songs which pale next to the real releases and songs that never should have seen the light of day ("Bad Idea").

Side B is a bunch of live cuts - and again, the versions of their better material ("Underground," "Philosophy," "Song for the Dumped," etc.) doesn't really benefit from the live treatment. A couple of metal-mocking tunes rear their heads, and they're adequately ridiculous - the Billy Joel style piano-hall encore sing-along "Satan in My Master" pulls the trick off nicely by limiting itself to about a minute. All the songs are good, sure, but they end up sounding like less tight versions of the album cuts. The huge exception is "Twin Falls," a Built to Spill ballad cover transferred (unsurprisingly) to piano that turns out brilliantly. Ben Folds's vocals match this song expertly; I actually heard the original well after I heard this version - forgive me, I was raised in Texas - and I still think BFF may have improved on it quite a bit.

So it's basically some toss away stuff you don't need in the end. Interesting enough for big fans of BFF, but there's very little going on here besides the aforementioned highlights.

Status: Not Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "Twin Falls"