Ben Folds Five: "House"

Upon the release of Ben Folds Presents: University A Cappella in 2009, Ben Folds gushed over the project saying, “If this were Ben World, this would be my greatest hits record.” Curious, then, that 2011 sees the release of a career-spanning retrospective entitled The Best Imitation of Myself. Evidently, Folds had a change of heart, or at least realized there are almost seven billion other people in the world, and that some of them would eat up anything the bespectacled piano-wunderkind put out, even if it was mostly comprised of old material.

The three-disc set will include a handful of new tracks from a recently reconvened Ben Folds Five, and the release of “House” marks the first new material by the trio in twelve years. On first listen, it seems that “House” would fit seamlessly into the group’s 1997 opus, Whatever and Ever Amen. Like every other Folds-penned song, there are approximately zero lyrical vagaries. While NBC.com, the first site to host the song, curiously calls Folds the quintessential post-modern singer-songwriter-pianist, his songs are nothing if not straightforward; the new track is an ode to a house and the memories it contains, and it is pointedly devoid of metaphor. The domicile is described as “full of fetid memories unworthy of a song,” although for some reason we’re hearing a song about it anyway, and our expected reaction is to be so compelled by that we fork over twenty bucks to hear it sandwiched between tracks we’ve owned for years.

“House” ultimately falls flat as a single because it lacks any of the bombast that Ben Folds Five is known for. There’s none of the playfulness that we hear on “200 Angry Dwarves” or “Sports & Wine,” and there’s no hint of the kind of piano magic that appears on a song like “Narcolepsy.” In fact, there’s no indication that it’s anything more than a new solo release. It’s a piano-heavy song, and it features vocals by only Folds himself. It’s a forgettable, throwaway song, really, and if it appeared on the self-titled record, there’s no way we’d it would earn the honorific of a “greatest hit.”

Folds declares that he’s “never going up into that old house again,” which serves as a fine assessment of all that we’ve lost with a reformed Ben Folds Five. It seems unlikely that we will ever hear a new song that stacks up against their previous three releases. I’ve never been one to find Greatest Hits albums gratifying, and in tune with my expectations, it seems that the new material on Best Imitation of Myself can only be described as competent at best. “House” is a pale imitation of the grandeur Folds and company once exuded, like a photocopy scanned again and again until it lost all color, and it’s likely to please only the most diehard of fans.