Ben Folds Five - The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner (1999)
This surprising disc was the last release from Ben Folds Five and, incidentally, the last album with a title that doesn't start with "Now That's What I Call" or "Time Life Presents" that I can recall seeing advertised on television. One four AM night/morning at Rice ended with this memorable black, white and red album cover streaking across the screen while an insistent announcer requested that I call some 1-800 number to secure "Ben Folds Five's new concept album." I was intrigued, natch, but elected to spend local and not pay $4.95 in S&H fees. I specifically remember listening to this in the admissions office with Beck and Brian Adolph while stuffing recruiting letters. Good times.
This disc is notably more serious than the previous Ben Folds releases - plenty of wit and one-liners, sure, but the jovial triumphant-and-or-scorned-dork tone (cf "Underground," "Song for the Dumped," "Battle of Who Could Care Less," etc.) (which, incidentally, I will never dissociate from witty-triumphant-scorned-dork-and-recently-married-pal Jason Duke) is less upfront. Part of the impression is due to the album's operatic opening quartet of songs. "Narcolepsy" practically flashes a neon sign that says "Theme! Motif! Dramatic Narrative!," screaming "Musical!" much more than "piano rock album." Which is cool - off the bat, we get the feeling that this disc will be a stab at the (seemingly entirely Shimon-endorsed) EPIC album. It's an exceedingly solid opener, complete with a rollicking bridge and full band explosion.
"Don't Change Your Plans" is another somber ballad / mid-tempo rocker fraught with BF's signature sensitive-guy songwriting about breakup. Typical heart-breaking lines: "You have made me smile again / In fact I might be sore from it / It's been a while." It notoriously features a shmaltzy horn bridge (allmusic calls this Burt Bacharach-ish, and, um, yep) that you can either find exceedingly cheesy / played or hipster-ironic, depending on your sympathies. Outside of that, the song is effectively sad, only to be outdone by the self-pitying/blaming follow-up, "Mess." Hard to declare whether the narrator of this minor-key-ish rolling piano number deserves sympathy - the appeals of "I don't believe in God / So I can't be saved" are as teenaged melodramatic as they sound, but the repeated admissions of his own failure and the solitude it's engendered are sincere. It's another "big" song, and I'm always well-sucked into its disjointed, associative sad narrative.
"Magic" takes another turn for the operatic and reminds us all that we are in the land of strings and tympanis. "Saw you last night / Danced by the light of the moon" sections seem to borrow as much from REM as they do from your favorite Webber tune. More heart-aching follows in "Hospital Tune" which is as blue as it sounds (even a jazz fill can't life it). As you may have noticed, this big serious album hits a dramatic, romantic and tragic tone and spends its entire first half in a musically diverse but emotionally consistent phase. The ideas that are used to create this atmosphere aren't earth-shattering avant garde-ism, but these are risks that BFF is taking - there are no singles here, and the band seems happy sticking to its album-as-a-whole guns. Impressive stuff, and if you're in the mood for such story-telling, the first half of Messner can nail it.
Thankfully, though, the band does not overdo this mood. "Army" swoops in with uptempo, upbeat rock at exactly the right time, and the opening line - "Well I thought about the army / Dad said, 'Son, you're fucking high!'" - disturbs whatever was left of the dejected, somber mood. Horns blare in Chicago fashion, and a funny tale of misspent college, band breakups, and Chick-fil-A employment ensues. Some very "Rocky Raccoon" saloon piano work rears its head, too - in other words, the inner goof busted out. It's still a downer - "I say to my reflection / God please spare me more rejection!" - but the edge of cool self-loathing makes it fun/okay. And the end collapse / segue into "Your Redneck Past" is great, though, admittedly, anything that leads into a song with the lyric "Who do you wanna be? / Billy Idol or Kool Moe Dee?" is generally going to be great. "YRP" is another ironic take, a strident piano-banger in which the narrator laments his embarrassing beginnings. It again engages in cheesy piano fills and odd choices for a pop album. This fades into a somewhat eerie spoken word piece featuring a recorded telephone message from BF's dad (rambling about space atrophy) backed by some lounge music.
"Regrets" reprises the "I thought about ..." line from the end of Army and goes on to limn the narrator's childhood memories in a semi-monotone drone against a fast marching riffs. (Those riffs also underlie a laser-gun sounding synth lead that sounds a whole lot like something off BF's solo Fear of Pop album). The choruses in this one are spacey backup "ooh-oh-wah-oh-wah!" runs that continue the lounge feel from the previous song. The end of this song drops into nothing short of a Pink Floyd acme-of-angst scream a la The Wall or DSOTM (think "Great Gig"). It's jarring, and moreso since it's followed by the low-key "Jane," a piano hotel bar ballad that is decently "cool" but probably serves as the weak point of the album.
The album that opens up with the stereotypical (though good, dgmw) operatic number also pulls the classic closer with the tune un-cleverly titled "Lullabye." It's a bar-closing, sing-along waltz that's somehow both pitch perfect and incredibly cliched. It really makes no apologies for the latter fact, though, so I've always taken this bold-faced number with the appropriate salt and loved it despite its frivolity.
As is typical of the genre, Reinhold Messner doesn't really maintain its concept album all the way through - there are certainly a lot of introspective and lamenting tunes here, but its debatable whether there's any sign that they're tied to the same person or what on earth "Jane" or "Lullabye" have to do with any of it. The name "Reinhold Messner" was, according to the band, the name of one of the member's fake ID's in high school. So as autobiographical as some sections may sound (and, with BF's dad's voice recording, are), the patchwork may be just a great dreamed set of reflections for many invented identities. Fair enough; I admire the attempt and the willingness to divert from the indie-piano-rock vibe of their first two albums more than any idea of "perfect execution."
RM ends up being a great collection of non-"standard" BFF tunes regardless; BF would go solo soon after and indulge in more "biographical" songs that largely lack the grace of the ones here. I think that's what I like best of the album - it's got a lot of the same unapologetic geek-emotion of the first two, but unlike some of the later work, the tone comes off as measured/mature and not as overtly gushing. Not that I don't dig the unsubtlety of the earlier work and some of it from the later - those glowing reviews will come someday, too, and I'm sure I'll contradict myself thoroughly - but RM is a particularly good album from the mysterious-serious side of the BFF spectrum before solo BF trudged to its way-too-sentimental/goofy end.
Status: Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "Mess"
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