Dear Ms. Beasley,

One of my higher-ups alerted me to your valedictory XX Files column in yesterday’s Washington Post Magazine. Imagine my surprise to discover that it was all about me!

Surprise and chagrin, to be honest. Because your column paints a horrifying picture of post-college male decadence, including but not limited to 1.) gluttony 2.) a dependency on beer and 3.) suggestively redacted Tenacious D lyrics.

Read More “An Open Letter to Sandra Beasley
Or: So long, and sorry for the a cappella!” »

I’ve heard the Name Game play out in many contexts, but at a concert—between the drummer and some guy standing ten rows into the audience—was a new one. “Do you know Rebecca Callahan*?” shouted a tall kid in a white Polo. “She was, like, two grades ahead…”

“Rebecca, oh, yeah,” replied Fleet Foxes drummer J. Tillman.

This, one supposes, is the fate of stage banter at a show when the drummer admits he grew up in a nearby suburb (Rockville) and is pressed upon to kill time between every song while the lead singer re-tunes his 12-string guitar and the rest of the band hangs out in unhelpful silence. But that was the sort of casual vibe Fleet Foxes brought to the 9:30 Club on Wednesday, breaking down the distance between the band and the sold-out audience in such a way that it felt less like a crowded concert hall than the living room of a buddy who makes you pay $9 for a Guinness. Other topics of band-audience banter included the menu at Rockville pastry shop The Fractured Prune, frontman Robin Pecknold’s bad haircut (hidden beneath a red knit hat, which he refused to remove), and whether Tillman more closely resembled Jesus Christ, Charles Manson, or Rob Zombie.

Read More “9:30 Two-fer: Fleet Foxes and M. Ward” »

So I finally got around to listening to Ben Folds‘ new a cappella album, and I had some thoughts I wanted to append to last week’s post. Those of you who are still in the process of forgiving me for bringing Ben Folds and a cappella in to this space to begin with will probably want to skip this one. (Also, full disclosure: I belonged to an a cappella group in college that was denied a spot on the album. I can now confirm that the singers who made the cut turned out to be much more talented than I am.)

I have always thought a cappella music was a lot more fun to perform than to listen to, but I can appreciate a well-realized arrangement when I hear one. This album has more than a few of those; that’s not the problem. The problem is that the portion of Folds’s oeuvre that lends itself to the a cappella adaptation is the sort of soft-edged superpop that been his general tack ever since Ben Folds Five disbanded in 2000. No vocalists, however talented, can imitate the frenetic piano runs and heedless mashing that made Folds so fun in the ’90s, and few would dare attempt his jazzier arrangements (”Sports and Wine,” “Uncle Walter,” etc.), which are more suited to piano than voice anyway.

Read More “Album Review: That Ben Folds A Cappella Record” »

In certain company, few admissions invite greater scorn than revealing a fondness for Ben Folds or a cappella. (I speak from experience.) Some people regard the former, if you’re not a melodramatic 17-year-old, as symptomatic of arrested emotional development; and the latter, to use the unfortunate parlance of the times, as “super gay.”

These people might feel vindicated to learn that Mr. Folds has embraced the cult of collegiate a cappella with a natural affection. Neither should this surprise his fans, who have watched the pianist make the gradual (and somewhat lamentable) transition from a key-mashing, punk-jazz swashbuckler to round-sound, uber-pop balladeer over the last decade. Folds has exhibited an affinity for clean, ethereal harmonies ever since he went solo; a preoccupation with a cappella was a logical next step.

Case in point, last fall he commissioned an album of a cappella covers of his songs from college groups. The resulting album, Ben Folds Presents: University A Cappella, was released today. Engineering a greatest hits album sung by a phalanx of adoring co-eds might seem like a magnanimous gesture of populism or the height of narcissism, depending on your perspective. In any case, proceeds from the album have been marked for music-education charities, so it’s all good.