Says Ben Folds (Greensboro, North Carolina, 1966), the discreet architect of a very personal power pop with more than three decades of history, that the stories of Anton Chekhov, the Russian writer, the author of Uncle Vania and The lady with the dog, They could be considered songs. That they are short and elusive, that they have a clear melody, and that they point to some deep place in the reader. They are mysterious. “They have the same effect as songs,” he says. While shaping his fifth solo album—and perhaps the tenth of his career, among those he released with the trio Ben Folds Five, and his collaborations with Regina Spektor, Neil Gaiman and Nick Hornby, among others—the eclectic and bright What Matters Most, Folds reread the Russian genius avidly. “Everything shines in Chekhov's stories. No matter how many times I read them, I always find something new that sets something else off,” he says.
He's somewhere in Tennessee when he picks up the video call. On tour, she says. No, this time it will not go through Spain. Although it may not take long to do so, because perhaps the time has come. “In all this time, in these 30 years,” his career officially began in 1993, although since 1988 he has been part of bands indies, “No one had ever interviewed me in Spain,” he says, surprised. He repeats it on more than one occasion, as if he didn't quite believe it. Between time and time again he points out that What Matters Most It is about what its title indicates, that is, “the things that really matter.” “While I was writing it, one of my best friends died suddenly. And I thought that the things that really matter aren't always the same. That you are not at all aware sometimes of what really matters. And you have to be very attentive to give them the importance they deserve at all times,” he considers.
“There are a lot of other things you are doing, or agreeing to do, that you don't care about in the least, and that are preventing you from being happy.”
The title track of the album, an impeccable pop midtempo, with Folds on the piano, building a powerful, soaring ballad from a sad smile, is dedicated to that friend. And there is, in the lyrics themselves, an attempt to push aside everything that did not matter at the time, and that did not allow him to see what he had, or that, precisely because it was there, should have allowed him to do so. “The artist communicates with himself through his art. He asks himself a question for which he tries to find an answer. And yes, he has to do with that changing condition of the things that matter to us. It's not as simple as quitting a shitty job because it's consuming your life. That's the most obvious thing. What you see most. “There are a lot of other things that you are doing, or agreeing to do, that you don't care about in the least, and that are preventing you from being happy, they are preventing you from enjoying what truly matters at that moment,” he insists.
As a musician, as an artist, Ben Folds wants to be honest. You must be, he says. “There is no other commitment than the commitment to yourself. One must be honest, and take off his armor every time he sits at the piano, or writes a song. He takes it off for a while, and then puts it back on to continue with his life,” he adds. He becomes extremely “sensitive,” he says while composing. “You become fragile, but it is important that you do it, because without that fragility nothing you do would make sense,” he says. It could be said that the album protects itself with a beginning that is as powerful as it is ironic, and festive, almost a loop of promises—the swing perfect for something that does not stop growing and what it calls, ironically, as if we were about to abandon it: 'But Wait, There's More'—and advances through a small collection of moments that, at times, become fascinatingly narrative, as happens in the wonderful 'Moments'.
“I have never understood why a sad song, which sounds sad, also tells you about something sad. What would happen if a sad song had funny lyrics?”
“Throughout the album there is an attempt to experiment with form. To play, actually, with the background and the form. I have never understood why a sad song, which sounds sad, also tells you about something sad. What would happen if a sad song had funny lyrics? ”She asks. That is precisely what happens in 'Kristine From the 7th Grade'. “There is tremendous irony in that song, it's a fun song! But it sounds like something that could be sinking, and isn't the contrast fascinating?,” she wonders. Play, Folds, pizzicatos and black keys through – and impeccable pop songs that even include a street harmonica, and a character who feeds the birds: 'Back to Anonymous' -, to a binomial – that of joy and sadness – that has no What to be a dead end, but something in constant movement, something full of nuances, like all those contained in the percussive and charmingly naïve 'Paddleboat Breakup'.
It would seem that Folds is more aware than ever of the ground he walks on. “The truth is that yes. Before, the songs just came out. Now I know exactly what I want from each of them. I know where they're going. And I love it. Because if I have a goal, the result is always better,” he confesses. He can't believe that people get married, he says, to one of his old songs, 'The Luckiest', when he didn't even know what he was thinking about while he wrote it. “It's very strange,” he says. Now each song is like a canvas “to which I add things, intuitively.” Like the cello in 'Fragile'. “I don't have other artists in mind, or specific sounds of songs that I like, but I guess they're there,” he adds. Because he doesn't stop listening to music. All types. Although he also reads. He reads a lot, and always comes back to Chekhov.
Think of 'Vanka', the story about the boy who writes a letter to his grandfather telling him how terribly unhappy he feels, and how he misses him, and then innocently puts it in the mailbox without an address, writing just a “for grandpa”, and that night he goes to bed convinced that, of course, it will reach him. “Doesn't it sound like a song?” he insists. Before hanging up, he points out that the album cover—an elderly couple with yellow caps in the middle of the sky—is by a Spanish artist he discovered on Instagram: Sensetus. And it was the cover that led him to title the album that way—by the way, his first solo album in eight years. He believes he perfectly captures how he feels “what matters most is always in motion.”
Ben Folds
What Matters Most
New West Records
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