It's Noisy Out There

Ben Folds Five's first new album since before my children were born is out this week! Stream plenty of the tracks across the interwidenet by starting here at their official site. Thankfully what I hear is better than Do It Anyway. Fan-funded The Sound of the Life of the Mind is out Tuesday.

iTunes | Amazon MP3

Go Ahead And Laugh All You Want

Ben Folds Five returns after 13 years of being Ben Folds One with The Sound Of The Life Of The Mind - quite a mouthful. It comes after a successful fan-funded PledgeMusic campaign. The album will be released September 18 and carries all the hopes and dreams of 90s pop-loving obsessives like me. No pressure.

Pre-order: Amazon MP3 | PledgeMusic

Despite Your Grand Attempts

Ben Folds Five is getting back together for the first time in 13 years and working on a new album. Holy hell where has the time gone? BFF is also doing the fan-funded thing through PledgeMusic. Not surprisingly they've already met their goal and now some of the excess will be going to charity. The signed CDs and vinyl are gone but there are other price-points to net yourself some BFF exclusives.

Check out the new tune Do It Anyway below, which I'm guessing was their response to people telling them the song isn't that great. "Dude, the new tune is underwhelming." "Fuck it, we'll do it anyway." Ouch. New album tentatively scheduled for release in August.

What Do I Do With All These Voices?

Ben Folds is going to release a career retrospective (back in my day they were called greatest hits), which will include several new tunes from Ben Folds FIVE, the first recorded in 11 years! NBC recently revealed House, which is quite nice despite sounding at times a bit like the classic HBO theme song. Stereogum has the exclusive Tell Me What I Did. Its more raucous and snarky feel is a good contrast to the adult contemporary vibes of House. Stereogum has also posted the entire tracklist, which has pretty much every tune you'd expect and then some.

Hey, BFF, how about a new long player, eh?!

The 3-CD box set comes out October 11. Pre-order The Best Imitation of Myself here. Perfect name, btw.