Playing to an enthusiastic (and already sizeable) crowd undeterred by rain, rising singer/songwriter Lucy Rose (UK) proved a more than worthy opener for Ben Folds as she filled The Tivoli with melodic acoustic arrangements buoyed by her emotive vocals.
Seemingly at odds with his “guy next door” persona, Folds sat at the piano stage left and began bashing its keys without a word. But he was unable to repress his amiable tendencies for long, stopping in the middle of fan favourite Annie Waits to climb atop his instrument so photographers below could get a good shot of him. “Now you’ve got those photos, it’s like the show already happened,” he joked to the crowd, “I could just leave now!”
Perhaps a large (and very noisy) contingent of the audience should have, but it would take more than a few tactless punters to ruin the jovial atmosphere of a Ben Folds show. And this was no ordinary Ben Folds show, either - the Paper Aeroplane Request concept tangibly delighted his audience, giving them a small chance to hear their favourite deep cuts from Folds’ incredibly vast, scattered discography in the second half of the show.
In the first half, however, Folds was in charge - and in storyteller mode (or, as he put it, “doing that Springsteen thing”). Regaling the crowd with stories of rearranging his furniture post-breakup (So There), being confronted by unexpected aggression (I’m Not A Fan), and a man with a lot of dangerous ideas who dreamed of being president (Uncle Walter, and yes he sees the irony), Ben Folds revealed the origin stories behind his idiosyncratic yet irrepressibly relatable folk-pop to be as wild, yet everyday, as you’d expect. What he didn’t do was delve into the origin of his smash single You Don’t Know Me, not that his rapt audience cared - some thousand-odd people playing Regina Spektor to his Folds.
Ending the show’s first half with Stevens Last Night In Town and an impromptu drum solo (that probably went for just a touch too long), after a brief intermission an announcement gave the go-ahead to begin the Paper Aeroplane Request launch. Hundreds of paper planes with hopeful requests written landing around him on the stage, Folds sifted through the debris over the next hour to unearth steadfast favourites (Brick, Smoke, The Luckiest, Underground) as well as lesser-known gems from 1998’s Naked Baby Photos like Eddy Walker and Emaline. Effervescent personality as in-tact as ever, bursts of energy possessed Folds in the form of crowd-conducting and wild gesticulation frequently, as he bashed on the piano’s lid and flicking its strings for added effect.
One thing was clear throughout the night - Folds’ music, with its ability to find beauty and strength in the everyday, resonates just as loudly with his fans now as it ever did across his thirty year career.
Liz Ansley