Ben Folds – What Matters Most (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 39:54 minutes | 752 MB | Genre: Pop Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © New West Records, LLC
“More than anything, I wanted to make an album that was generous, that was useful,” says Ben Folds – “I want you to finish this record with something you didn’t have when you started” 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.
Tracklist:
1-1. Ben Folds – But Wait, There’s More (03:41)
1-2. Ben Folds – Clouds With Ellipses (03:00)
1-3. Ben Folds – Exhausting Lover (03:35)
1-4. Ben Folds – Fragile (03:35)
1-5. Ben Folds – Kristine From The 7th Grade (05:22)
1-6. Ben Folds – Back To Anonymous (04:20)
1-7. Ben Folds – Winslow Gardens (03:26)
1-8. Ben Folds – Paddleboat Breakup (04:49)
1-9. Ben Folds – What Matters Most (04:10)
1-10. Ben Folds – Moments (03:52)
