Ben Folds: What Matters Most - COMPACT DISCS

Title: What Matters Most
Artist: Ben Folds
Label: New West Records
Product Type: COMPACT DISCS
UPC: 607396654505
Genre: Rock
Release Date: 2023-06-02
Number of Discs: 1
Additional Details: BONUS TRACKS, AUTOGRAPHED / STAR SIGNED

Indeed, Folds' masterful new collection, What Matters Most, isn't so much a statement as it is an offering, an open hand reaching out to all those wounded and bewildered by a world that seems to make less and less sense every day. Recorded in East Nashville with co-producer Joe Pisapia, the album marks Folds' first new studio release in eight years, and it's a bold, timely, cinematic work, one that examines the tragic and the absurd in equal measure as it reckons with hope and despair, gratitude and loss, identity and perspective. The songs are bittersweet here, hilarious at times, but often laced with a quiet sense of longing and dread: a text message goes unanswered; an old classmate descends into the dark depths of internet conspiracies; a relationship unravels in the middle of a lake. And yet, taken as a whole, the result is an undeniably joyful record that refuses to succumb to the weight of the world around it, an ecstatic reminder of all the beauty and promise hiding in plain sight for anyone willing (and present enough) to recognize their moments as they arrive.

Tracks:
1.1 But Wait, There's More
1.2 Clouds with Ellipses
1.3 Exhausting Lover
1.4 Fragile
1.5 Kristine from the 7th Grade
1.6 Back to Anonymous
1.7 Winslow Gardens
1.8 Paddleboat Breakup
1.9 What Matters Most
1.10 Moments (Feat. Tall Heights)