Review: Ben Folds, The Forum – ‘A celebration of heart-squeezing joy’

Can you imagine what it must be like to have so many classic songs that you don’t know what to do with them? That you can just ignore them?

Most bands would kill for one classic album, Ben Folds has (at least) six. That’s six albums filled with some of the greatest pop music that has ever (ever!) been released.

He’s in the UK to support his latest album, What Matters Most, and tonight he spends most of the time ignoring one of the greatest back catalogues in alt-pop.

It’s a bit early to tell whether everything on the new album will reach classic status, will have the crowd filling in the ba-ba-bas and providing the backing vocals, but it’s starting to look as though it might.

Folds is the ultimate cult figure. Adored by those who know, vaguely remembered by those who don’t. His songs are the soundtrack to weddings, births and funerals.

Every word, every trumpet fill, every handclap is treasured, pored over, replicated. His live shows are, and always have been, a celebration of the heart-squeezing joy that only brilliant pop music can bring.

This evening, the setlist leans heavily towards What Matters Most and starts with Exhausting Lover. It has all of the ingredients of a Folds classic. It’s wry and knowing, whip smart with a chorus as big as your head.

Folds sits at his piano, pounding out the melody while guitar, cello, bass and Ross Garron’s very cool bass harmonica flesh everything else out.

Moments in, he’s given up actually sitting on his piano stool and is straddling it instead – all the better to attack those keys with a childlike relish.

If Folds is the obvious star of the show, then his band are seriously awesome too. Mandy Clarke is a Duracell-bunny bass player in white sneakers, bouncing, two stepping and grinning her way through springy pop gem Winslow Gardens.

Tim Harrington and Paul Wright play guitar and cello respectively, and also make up folk-pop band Tall Heights. The harmonies that they provided all night are breathtaking, elevating every song to the dizzy heights of Badfinger, Queen or Crosby, Stills & Nash.

On Fragile, especially, the harmony-drenched shivers down the spine are palpable.

The new songs are great. There’s no doubt about that. It is, however, the old ones that a packed Forum has come to see.

Landed has long been a huge favourite, taken from Songs for Silverman, it’s a story of dysfunction and desperation. It is, simply, a perfect pop song; tonight it soars.

Folds unfolding the story as the band cushions him. Each and every ba-ba-ba from the chorus sung by the crowd – it brings tears to the eyes.

That audience response makes up a huge amount of a Ben Folds show. For You Don’t Know Me At All we get to be Regina Spektor for the night, every one of her neatly barbed asides sung at the stage by every person in the place.

The three-part harmony on Not the Same seems to magic itself from nowhere, making a wonderful pop song even better. By now the Church of Ben Folds is in full operation, worship is the only word for it.

Knowing there’s that level of devotion in the room, Folds unfurls a highlight: Ascent of Stan, a fan favourite from the Rockin’ the Suburbs album, is where every aspect comes together.

The songwriting is incredible, harmonies glorious, the sugar-rush melody utterly joyous. If there is a more thrilling sound than this band at full throttle then who knows what that might be.

He makes us wait for two bona fide classics as Annie Waits and Zak & Sara appear in the encore but by then the rush of a huge pop high is so great that the audience file out fizzing, grinning, excitedly chattering.

It’s the mark of a great songwriter that they can leave out almost every song that people love (there was no Army or Brick or Underground or Kate or Gracie or The Luckiest or Rockin’ the Suburbs or…or…) and still keep the whole place happy.

Ben Folds was, simply, brilliant.

Main photo: Gavin McNamara

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