ALBUM REVIEW: Ben Folds Packs Stories and Characters into Songs of ‘What Matters Most’

Some musicians are poets, exploring the human condition in rhyme. Others are storytellers, writing 3 ½-minute short fiction with fully fleshed-out characters and the kind of fine details expected of a novelist. On What Matters Most, Ben Folds proves himself an able manipulator of the story song, with a literary flourish throughout.

Ben Folds (photo by Alysse Gafkjen)

What Matters Most opens not with a story song but with a bit of social commentary on “Wait, There’s More.” The song title is a phrase that should be familiar to anyone who’s ever turned on late-night television and watched infomercials selling everything from knives to detergent. Here Folds applies that hyperbolic phrase to the current political circus, with its reality television feel. We’re as much to blame for our situation as the politicians themselves: “Did we really think we’d go back to normal?” he asks. But there’s also a note of hopefulness in the song. “Do you believe in the good of humankind? / I do.”

 The album’s most successful story song is also its funniest, “Exhausting Lover.” Displaying the kind of sly alt-pop that made Ben Folds Five a popular act in the mid-’90s, Folds paints a vivid picture of the scene, from the title character’s “low bored monotone vocal fry” to his “third degree carpet burns.” From there, it’s adventure involving Hot Wheels tracks and half-naked flights through Cracker Barrel parking lots. The song also contains the album’s biggest earworm, the chorus “every kiss is a jam band solo / never gonna say YOLO no mo’ / My mind says no / My body says hell no.”

On the more melancholy side of the story songs is “Kristine from the Seventh Grade.” It’s a situation many will relate to, reconnecting with a middle-school crush only to discover that “someone who used to laugh a lot” has turned into a full-throated conspiracy peddler. Folds worries about her, asking “guns and dead fetuses / are you ok, Kristine?” But even here there is a hint of humor, as Folds notes “the misspellings they must be intentional / we went to a good school.” 

Such sketches abound on What Matters Most. The album’s second single, “Winslow Gardens,” details a couple’s life in an apartment building, from being the young people the old folks watched from the windows to watching from the windows themselves as a new generation of youngsters moves in. “Paddle Boat Breakup” features a couple whose relationship dissolves while they’re trapped on a lake.

Guests on the album include tour mates Tall Heights on “Moments,” the always great Ruby Amanfu on “Back to Anonymous,” and dodie on the chorus of “Clouds with Ellipses.”

If you enjoy story songs in the vein of Tom T. Hall or Shel Silverstein, What Matters Most is an album you’re going to want to listen to. If you just enjoy piano-based roots-pop songs with intelligent lyrics, What Matters Most has something for you as well. It’s Folds’ most compelling solo album yet.

Ben Folds’ What Matters Most is out June 2 on New West Records.