Tim Brough's Black Leather Bookshelf

Action Packed
4 Out Of 5 Stars

This review is from: The Best Imitation of Myself: A Retrospective (3 CD version). I have to give Ben Folds credit for his generosity if nothing else. His Three CD "Best Imitation Of Myself" best of is packed with hits, live tracks and oddballs. He also regroups The Ben Folds Five for three new songs (or one, "House," if you're buying the single disc edition. But if you're getting the deluxe version, Folds is all but daring you to say "but you should have put THIS song on the album instead of..."

Which kind of fits into Folds' offbeat personality. His best songs alternate between earnest emotion and nerdy snark, along with being a dutiful acolyte of Elton John and Todd Rundgren. Like Rundgren, Folds is 100% OK with taking a song you think should go one way and then bend it exactly towards the opposite ("Anna," "Army" - here in a live version). He also tends towards the hyper-literate in his emotional songs, which does make them standouts. It's that trait that made "Brick" the most unlikely of top 40 singles, a ballad about taking your girlfriend to get an abortion shortly after the Christmas holiday. Better still is "The Luckiest," a gorgeous ballad from "Rocking The Suburbs," about love everlasting with a twist. Why it never became a single I wonder about, and so does Folds in the collection's extensive liner notes.

Folds, naturally leans on that album and "Whatever and Ever Amen," his two most commercially successful. He doesn't slack for the other albums, though, with songs from each album included. On the live disc, he digs even deeper from other albums, and the rarites disc has a few worthy B-Sides (his hilarious cover of "B^tch@s Ain't Sh!+") and soundtrack contributions, like his cover of Steely Dan's "Barrytown." However, the disc is loaded with demos of never finished songs, along with the other two new BF5 recordings. It's obvious that Folds is smarter than the average pop-star and pretty humble (who else would record stuff like "There's Always Someone Cooler Than You" or feel comfortable covering Wham's "Careless Whisper" with Rufus Wainwright?

That is what makes "Best Imitation Of Myself" cool. Ben Folds has the chops, the knack for melody, and sense of humor to take average pop and make it into something better. Even if you don't have any of his albums or maybe just one or two, this is as solid a retrospective of one man's work as you'll find by any 'star' of the 90's and beyond.