Ben Folds - "Songs For Silverman" (Sony, 2005) * * * *

The Music
Ben Folds - "Gracie"
Ben Folds - "Landed"

Rockin' the Suburbs, had the worst possible Tuesday release date: September 11, 2001. According to the media, people stopped caring about things like music once those two towers fell, but I remember buying Ben's album and spending that next two or three months listening and wishing I had such a way with character sketches. While the rest of my friends were discussing Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan, I was listening to "Zak and Sara" and "Fred Jones (Part 2)" and waiting for life to get back to stasis.

That album never really took off, but generally drew solid reviews. Ben spent the next three years touring with himself and a piano, showcasing his original songwriting and those characters that made the album such a rich tapestry. Along the way he released a trio of internet-only EPs, while his fans waited for his Sophomore solo effort.

What we got is close to a masterpiece.

Not content to merely recreate what had worked on Rockin' the Suburbs, Ben has instead travelled back to the age of early Ben Folds Five, producing an album that succeeds at blending jazz with his usual piano-pop. He's still got his wry wit on songs like "Bastard" (The old bastard left his ties and his suit / a brown box, mothballs and bowling shoes / and his opinions so you'll never have to chose / pretty soon you'll be an old bastard too) in which he turns a song written in 7/4 time into one that could (and should) be played on radio stations around the country.

It's a song about life, aging, and the need to be able to maintain one's identity in a changing world. "Tears land on a hand on a chest, the old bastard had a paradigm arrest," he sings. "He got smaller and the world got big; the more he knew he knew he didn't know s---; the whiz-man never fit him like the whiz kid did ..." But it's okay, Ben says. THere's no need to pretend we really understand everything -- and it's okay if we don't know anything.

There are many standouts on the album. "Trusted" brings up sonic comparisons to "Selfless, Cold and Composed" off BFF's album Whatever and Ever, Amen. "How does it feel to realize you're all alone behind your eyes?" he asks us. "It seems to me if you can't trust you can't be trusted."

Then with "Gracie," an evocatively elemental song written for his daughter, Ben quietly sings an ode to childhood and what every parent wishes he could hold onto despite the passing of time. "You nodded off in my arms watching TV; I won't move you an inch even though my arm's asleep. One day you're gonna want to go and we'll hope we've taught you everything you ought to know ..." he sings plaintively. There's just something about the way his voice crackles lightly as he sings that makes the song so expressive.

But that's Folds' calling card. He's this generation's piano man, and with this album he shows that he's got more up his sleeve than the snarky college rock that made Ben Folds Five so popular. The fact that he can blend intelligent, thoughtful lyrics with earcatching music, all while blending in piano jazz that bends the conventions of what is pop, just shows he's a solo artist ready to be here for the long haul.

And I couldn't be happier.