BEN FOLDS + WASO @ Perth Concert Hall - Fri. 29 Jan. 2021

Written by: Sheldon Ang - Around The Sound

“The West Australian Symphony Ochestra is very clever, they talked me into it, as we came up the idea of leaving out the rock band. So this is the rock band... there wasn’t any plexi glass and some drummer doing the white man thing... and a 6-string bass player doing the loud shit. Full credit to how much talent there is in Australia and particularly in this region… and all the charts that I’ve travelled with in the last 5 years were all done here and the one before. Gracie was scored by Paul Buckmaster, and if you don’t know that name, Paul Buckmaster was the legend – a good friend of mine, a mentor. He passed away three years ago. And anything in the 70’s that has an orchestra and strings in it - he probably did it... he did all of ELTON JOHN stuff. And more impressive, when he was 18, he scored the DAVID BOWIE hit; the one about the space dude (Space Oddity, with the audience chuckling)... you might know it... yeah that... he scored... and then he went to score all kind of stuff... he was so impressive... and so he was like ‘Where are you all from... we’re all from Perth...’ Maybe I should just play the song...”

BEN FOLDS flirted with the crowd as often as serenading them lyrically, and by some account he stood centre stage as a narrator, a stand-up comedian and an auto biographer, making this concert a dream for the staunch historians who caressed over his personal life with the predilection for his music. For others, the wonderment behind the songs may be a bit too much, with Folds sometimes babbling for over four minutes. But as a music journalist who has interviewed almost forty artists from across the globe in 2020, this writer was intrigued by Fold’s past - a man of many talents, and their manifestation and a music journey that propagated from a conceptual dream to the air waves of stardom...

Arguably, the performance at the Perth Concert Hall with WASO was the first “international act” to perform in Australia since March of 2020. The American, now temporally residing in Adelaide due to Covid, graced the stage to a standing ovation by the Western Australia Symphony Orchestra before settling his fingers onto the ebony and ivory of his Yamaha grand piano, sparking the night with Effington from his third and latest album “Way to Normal” (2008), which Folds said during an interview with L.A. Times that the song was inspired while driving by a town called Effingham in Illinois. With snarky lyrics such as, Are they effing in their yards? Effing in their Cars? perhaps the song was an expulsion of frustration from the year that had gone by, causing a ten-month delay to the Perth performance from the original schedule.

The full piece orchestra was led by Jessica Gethin, an internationally acclaimed conductor who has spread her baton throughout the United States, Asia, Australia and New Zealand and has held the position as the Chief Conductor of the Perth Symphony between 2011 and 2019. She exhilaratingly weaved her baton like a martial arts expert, orchestrating the full piece comprising of violin, viola, cello, double bass, harp and so forth, thrilling the audience as much as the centrepiece himself, many of whom were hypnotised by the energetic animation and hair weaving flicks of the Perth native. 

The sixteen-song set list, which included the likes of Jesusland, Zak and Sara, Rock This Bitch, and Kylie from Connecticut was divided into two sets, with a twenty-five minute break in between as we’d expect from an orchestra.  The sing along song of the night was Peter Allen’s hit, I still call Australia Home, a dedication to his temporary residence.

Folds is no stranger to the orchestral machination, having performed across the globe with the world’s most prestigious full piece. The precocious artist is also the first Artistic Advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Centre. So for most, they’d expect nothing less from Folds with the infusion of his musical and sonic styles with the Orchestra, as the shock and awe wasn’t as tangible as the performance of Metallica and KISS with the San Francisco Symphony and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, or as a matter fact, two weeks prior, Birds of Tokyo with WASO that reignited the audience’s passion for the local band.    

For most parts, the audience remained silent, seduced by the hypnotic vocals of the Winston-Salem born musician, producer, composer, record producer, NY times best-selling writer, and a member of the prestigious Sony Artisan of Imagery (an avid photographer, his photography has featured in a National Geography documentary)...tranced by the lights of Sir Newton’s spectrum glazing the floor like a lighthouse sweeping the ocean. The encore of the night was Luckiest, the biggest ballad from Fold’s solo repertoire, which was fitting in many ways.

Tonight was all about Fold’s personal showpiece, performing songs across his three solo albums after disembarking from the trio Ben Fold Five in 2000. Despite the solo effort, Folds managed to squeeze a couple of songs in dedication to his trio days of the last millennium in Erase Me and Steven’s Last Night in Town. But most were hoping for the smash hit Brick (you know that one with the high falsetto at the start of the chorus - She’s a Brick and I’m drowning Slowly, Off the coast and I’m headed nowhere) which put Ben Folds Five on the world map in 1997. That song would have sealed the night, with one audience even yelled out “Brick!” when Folds offered a request.

Despite of the obvious omission, tonight’s performance was a masterclass of symbiotic infusion of some sort.

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