The Sessions performance of "Emaline" is, IMO, the definitive version.

Ben Folds is up there with with They Might Be Giants in the "Catchy Songs With Holy Shit Lyrics When You Really Listen To Them" Hall of Fame.

Ben's a pretty solid bassist and drummer in his own right, but he doesn't have anywhere near the chops that Sledge and Jesse have. His BF5 bandmates also came at pop music from very different starting points than his own Elton John/ Billy Joel-soaked childhood - IIRC, Sledge was a metalhead and Jesse was a jazz…

Yeah, that's it exactly! And many times it works for me (I could jam to the dizzying chord charges in "Electric Version" for days), and sometimes it doesn't. Many of the New Pornographers' best songs are the ones where they manage to take something musically bizarre and somehow make it feel like the most natural thing…

I know I'm one of the few NP fans who feels this way, but "Challengers" is my favorite album of theirs, and "My Rights Versus Yours" is my favorite track from that record. There's a delicate beauty here that Newman's songwriting doesn't usually quite hit, often because he veers too instinctually nontraditional in his…

Just seeing those lines written out brought the Adama Family theme into my head, unbidden.