Ben Folds Five: Ben Folds (vocals, piano); Robert Sledge (bass, background vocals); Darren Jessee (drums, background vocals).
Additional personnel: Antoine Silverman, Mark Feldman, Lorenza Ponce (violin); Jane Scarpantoni (cello); Ken Mosher (alto & baritone saxophones); Tom Maxwell, Paul Shapiro (tenor saxophone); Frank London (trumpet); John Mark Painter (flugelhorn, valve trombone).
Recorded at Sound City Studios and Grandmaster Studios, Los Angeles, California; Water Music, Hoboken, New Jersey; RPM Studios, New York, New York.
When Ben Folds and his oddly-named trio crashed the guitar-heavy grunge party dominating the early part of the '90s, he did so by melding unerring pop sensibilities with acerbic lyrics. REINHOLD MEISSNER finds Folds using more orchestrations on a record full of pop confections that was unknowingly named for the first man to climb Mt. Everest without an oxygen tank. "Don't Change Your Plans" includes a flugelhorn section reminiscent of any classic Bacharach/David composition, whereas the slightly more uptempo "Mess" carries a breeziness that has Elton John's influence all over it. Folds avoids filling REINHOLD solely with such nakedly emotive numbers like "Magic" and "Hospital Song" by fiercely rocking the '88s.
The semi-autobiographical "Army" bubbles over with Robert Sledge's unmistakable fuzz bass and help from the Squirrel Nut Zipper's horn section. Folds throws in a semi-rap and electronic sound effects to poke fun at his southern upbringing in "Your Redneck Past" and uses an answering machine message left by his dad as the vocal track for the coffee-house jazz of "Your Most Valuable Possession." Folds wraps everything up with the mid-tempoed "Lullabye," a song whose combination of orchestral arrangements and soulful piano playing bring to mind Ray Charles.
What the critics say...
Rolling Stone (5/13/99, pp.91-93) - 3 1/2 stars (out of 5) - "...ambitious, irritating, confounding, catchy and strangely compelling....'Radiohead for geeks'....Folds goes for the gusto here..."
Spin (6/99, p.140) - 8 (out of 10) - "...Folds and Co. embrace old-fashioned sunny-but-sad pop art echoing prime Dionne Warwick, 10cc, and Fold's beloved Captain Fantastic. It can be impressive..."
Entertainment Weekly (5/7/99, pp.60-61) - "...Folds writes chirpy pop melodies much sparer than those of old-school art-rock bands, and the Five are less taken with electronic gizmos..." - Rating: B
Q (6/99, p.102) - (4 out of 5) - Excellent - "...vaguely conceptual,less frantic than previous work, more lush in both scope and arrangement. Influences seem more diverse and somehow older....Exciting stuff. And they're memorable, individual and kinda odball fun."
CMJ (4/26/99, p.3) - "...faithful and pateient adherents to Folds' slacker gospel will...accept [REINHOLD MESSNER] as required reading."
Melody Maker (5/8/99, p.46) - 4 stars (out of 5) - "...loads of great piano flourishes....this soundtracks the swagger of conquering a whole heap of very, very beautiful humpback bridges..."
Mojo (Publisher) (1/00, p.31) - Ranked #9 in Mojo Magazine's "Best of 1999."
Mojo (Publisher) (5/99, p.108) - "...exhilarating, amusingly inappropriate and just plain silly by turns....fresh textures have been employed to considerable effect and there's an attention to dynamic detail and palpable compositional ambition that marks the album as a significant development..."
NME (Magazine) (5/1/99, p.40) - 7 out of 10 - "...It has the ambitious scope and fragile bravado of a record hewn out of tremendous passion....reeling from plinkety cabaret to '70s AOR to breathless Beach Boys melodics with panoramic ease..."
