“Way to Normal”
Ben Folds, $15.98

Ben Folds is a master at convincing the world that he’s spilling his guts. He reveals just enough in his songs to make you feel like he’s inviting you into his personal life, then makes light of it. Listeners will supposedly fall for the deception, without considering all the emotions he’s masking by thrusting humor against every heartfelt lyric. But just like any old friend who laughs off his woes, he could be revealing something about his psyche by clowning about them, just as he would if he didn’t feel the need to.

This, of course, is more likely a clever and justified ruse. Though music serves as an outlet for self-expression, it makes sense to hold back when it’s being shared with a world full of strangers. And Folds’ humor is appreciated. He’s smart, funny, and candid when appropriate, so his songs are drenched in personality; it makes his music endearing, hard to ignore, and especially hard to dislike. Besides, what he does with a keyboard is just layer upon beautiful layer of brilliance at times. The piano is such an enchanting instrument that, when implemented well, bewitches the heart. Folds works his voodoo on the ivories on “Way to Normal” — though I am coherent at this time, I’m certain that I’m under some sort of dormant hypnosis that, when activated (i.e. when I play his record), will basically make me his love slave.

Touché, Mr. Folds. If you want me, come and get me. But just know that you’re ineffective without that piano at the helm.

“Normal” here is literally a place, figuratively an objective. I’m certain that Folds has little intention of ever reaching “normal” as a state of being (or at least little confidence that it’s even an attainable goal), and that’s perhaps part of the gag, but in one song, he’s traveling to a city of that name. In “Effington,” he pits his fantasies of life in a place along the highway (It “could be a wonderful effing place,” he sings) against his mundane destination, Normal, Ill. — by the way, a search of Google Maps tells me that Effington is in Minnesota. And it’s here where Folds showcases a variety of musical styles on the piano (he even goes for baroque at one point, and I’m sort of proud of that pun).

Folds tells stories, stories that seem irrelevant, but all fit into the quirky life that he works to define. The album opens with “Hiroshima (B B B Benny Hit His Head)” — an obvious homage to Elton John’s “Benny and the Jets” — that tells the story of a time he was injured during a concert and continued to perform even with “blood on the keyboard.” It sets the record off with Folds hammering out chords on the keyboard in his signature form. In “Cologne,” the album’s centerpiece, he sings about cutting the final thread that keeps someone hanging onto a failed relationship. Though the instrumentation is strong and dramatic, Folds captures a feeling of emptiness that just oozes out of the speakers. Beautiful, yet painful; lush, yet stark. A masterful composition that is conveyed through the music alone, with the lyrics just driving it home.

He’s included plenty of his energetic pop melodies that are every Ben Folds tracklist’s bread and butter. It’s done best on “The Frown Song” and “Brainwascht.” “B**** Went Nuts” is fun for boys and girls (the adult kind, due to language and mature themes) because men need a song that identifies with their relationship woes, and women will find their own way to identify because either a) feminism has done nothing to wash away self-deprecation; or b) we all think every other woman in the world is crazy.

But really, the reigning song on the record is his collaboration with Regina Spektor, “You Don’t Know Me.” The staccato sound works here with strings sweeping atop it. It could actually be one of the best songs of Folds’ career.