Ben Folds
Ben Folds wants you to know his new album What Matters Most is for you. No, seriously — the record, which hits stores Friday, is a present from him to you.
Producer Joe Pisapia remembers the moment early in the recording sessions when he learned that was what Folds had in mind. He had asked Folds why he preferred one take over another.
“I was trying to understand his methodology so I could help him better.” Pisapia recalls. “He said, ‘The record needs to be generous,’ and then he elaborated. He said, ‘The record isn’t about me or you. It’s for the people. And all our decisions have to be filtered through that lens, and that’s how we know we’re hitting the mark.’”
“Joe knew what I meant immediately, because we sort of speak the same language,” Folds says. “Joe and I were both like, ‘Let’s make it a beautiful album.’ That is, you step inside it — everything from the production, the mix, the sound of the instruments, what’s chosen to play, it’s for you. This is your gift. Press play and enjoy.”
What Matters Most is indeed a beautiful album, a pop-rock recording of the highest order. Exquisitely arranged and orchestrated, it integrates elements of classical music and jazz into a 10-song cycle that feels like a concept album.
“I don’t know if I would call it that or not, but I can see why someone would,” Folds says. “I think a lot of good albums, you would probably be tempted to call them that. When they flow, and you really thought about them that way — yeah, then it starts to kind of head towards that.”
Folds composed most of the material on the album during the pandemic lockdown, or as Pisapia calls it, the “pandejo.”
“I kind of went through two phases,” Folds says. “I started by going, ‘Holy shit, I’ve got all this time in lockdown.’ And I started writing and working, and I found I threw almost all that away as I loosened up towards the end.”
Many of the songs reflect moments in Folds’ life during the lockdown. Some of those personal moments he writes about speak to ideas that radiate far beyond him as well, which reinforces the album’s conceptual feeling.
Built upon a repeating keyboard riff Folds originally had in mind as an instrumental piece for the group yMusic, the bouncy album opener “But Wait, There’s More” ruminates on America post-Trump: “Did you really think we’d go back to normal / Did you ever think we could cut that cord / Because looks who’s coming back / Coming back for more.” In the chorus, he wonders, “Do you still believe in humankind?” Then he declares, “I do.”
Folds is focused on the things that unite people, not what divides us, as he makes clear in “Kristine From the 7th Grade,” in which he imagines reconnecting with an old classmate via social media and finding her page is filled with “cryptic dark Bible quotes / Guns and dead fetuses.” He concludes the song by saying, “But if these days it’s really us’s and thems / Maybe you should take me off both of those lists.”
Ben Folds
As for many of us, one of the byproducts of the lockdown for Folds was a reassessment of what is important to us, which he addresses on “What Matters Most.”
“It’s about throwing away things — and literally throwing things away from my storage space,” he says of the title cut. “And that is something I think a lot of us did after the pandemic. We all moved, things changed, and we reestablished what does matter the most. Because I thought it was something, and I’m confused, and I don’t know what matters most. I was worrying about those things, and then I found out that one of my best friends died. I got a text while I was in the storage unit. … It was Bob Saget.”
Even as Folds tries on the record to make sense of times that often make no sense, there are lighter moments featuring his trademark self-deprecating sense of humor. “Exhausting Lover” tells the story of a touring musician who has an especially fatiguing and crazy one-night stand. When asked to what degree the song is informed by his own touring experiences, Folds says it’s “an amalgamation, an exaggeration and a good dose of fiction.”
Folds cut the record over a three-week period in May 2022 at Pisapia’s Middletree Studio in East Nashville. He is credited with “singing, piano-ing, bass-ing, some drumming” and was backed on the basic tracks by the members of Tall Heights (acoustic guitarist-vocalist Tim Harrington, cellist-vocalist Paul Wright and drummer Paul Dumas), who will open his June 27 date at the Ryman, and keyboardist and harmonica player Ross Garren. Pisapia, meanwhile, contributed electric guitars, pedal steel and backing vocals. Dodie Clark added “a choir of Dodies” to “Clouds With Ellipses.” Rob Moose arranged strings and played violins and violas on “Fragile” and “Winslow Gardens.” On three of the numbers, Folds included a horn section featuring Jim Hoke on saxophone, Emmanuel Echem on trumpet and Jim Hinchey on trombone.
“I wanted to make something that was as state-of-the-art as I could manage in an era where we’ve kind of forgotten certain things about craft,” Folds says. “Just like I’m making something to put on your wall, and I want you to be happy every day that you walk into the room and you see it.”
