Hymns to the white-male angst

Ben Folds

Rockin’ the Suburbs

Epic Records

Y’all don’t know what it’s like, Being young, middle class and white.– Ben Folds

It doesn’t take a psychic to figure out that Ben Folds – singer, songwriter, and piano player for his own band, Ben Folds Five – is one pissed-off, cranky white dude. Plus he’s losing his hair.

This could explain the angst and melancholia that permeate his first solo album – a particular white man’s angst that is leavened by Folds’ patented sensitive ballad writing.

Rockin’ the Suburbs is pretty much a one-man show: Folds handles drums, bass, guitars and synths on these 12 tracks, as well as tickling the ivories throughout. There are no standout slacker hits like 1999’s Brick, but the solo space gives Folds room to embellish and fill out his songs, minus the grunge bass and heavy drumming of his erstwhile trio. As on previous efforts, Ben Folds adds orchestral arrangements, zinging symphonic flourishes to tales of Gen X love lost (and found). Titular female characters abound, like Annie Waits, the heroine of the opening cut. Zak and Sara pulsates along on an analog synth riff borrowed from the ’70s or ’80s. Carrying Cathy is about a girl who keeps falling down, while Losing Lisa is pretty much self-evident.

But it’s the male characters on Rockin’ the Suburbs that you have to watch out for. The former "textbook hippie man" in The Ascent of Stan has forgotten his ideals and become part of The Establishment. And he’s not happy about it, either. The character in Fired seems to be a white corporate manager who has had enough of his employees’ gripes ("Don’t think that I don’t know what you’re saying about me"); he has the final laugh by downsizing everyone around him. Pathos rears its head in Fred Jones Part 2, which relates the last working day (or last day on earth) of a career man. The teary ballads are usually played in 3/4 time, to lend them extra sentimentality. Other songs, I swear, sound like Barry Manilow resurrected (Still Fighting It has a middle section that bounces along like I Write the Songs). In truth, if Ben Folds was not a cranky white dude who falls into the "alternative" category (more due to his lyrical stance than his trained musical ear), his music would be hard to disinguish from Elton John’s, Joe Jackson’s, or – egad! – Barry Manilow’s.

This is not to disparage Ben Folds. Each album has shown him branching further into lyrical delirium and clever musical structure. As if to deny all this, he pens an MTV-friendly "simple" three-chord song that mocks the white rocker’s stance: Rockin’ the Suburbs seems to take on white rappers such as Eminem ("I take the checks and face the facts/that some producer with computers fixes all my shitty tracks"), and is as dumb as any teen-movie anthem could be.

It’s hard to dislike Ben Folds, though some probably find his voice whiny and his world view a little suspect. In an arena of faceless alternative acts that downplay musical ability (replacing it with fuzz, distortion and attitude), Folds has something that true slackers wouldn’t go near with a ten-foot pole: showmanship (the only other Gen X singer-songwriter with a showy flair that comes to mind is Jeff Buckley, and he’s dead already). Now, whether Ben Folds becomes the Leonard Cohen or the Barry Manilow of his generation – that’s entirely up to him.