The '80s are back with a vengeance. A George Bush is in the White House, the stock market has gone boom and bust, Rob Lowe's a big star, and thirtysomething is back on TV. If you're a thirtysomething yourself now, you may find the current mini-revival -- especially those reruns -- mildly amusing at first. Then you might appreciate the underlying issues that seemed mundane or irrelevant to you back then: marriage, balancing work and family, buying a house, paying bills, picking up the kids from soccer practice. Finally, you'll agree with your original assessment: sure, these people have problems, but they're still privileged white folk who whine too damn much.

It's fitting that these Bravo reruns are airing concurrently with the release of Ben Folds's Rockin' the Suburbs (Epic). He's 34 and married with two kids, he's left the old firm (Ben Folds Five) to strike out on his own (just like Michael and Elliot!), and all those issues are suddenly important to him. (He's also performing this Sunday at Lupo's.) As a pianist and songwriter, he has a musical sensibility that owes a lot to the '80s, particularly Billy Joel, Joe Jackson, Elton John, and Elvis Costello. And the fellow suburbanites he sings about are similarly stuck in the '80s. Of course, to indict them is to indict himself. How much you like this record will depend on how much you're willing to laugh at, sob over, recognize, and otherwise identify with concerns like these.

With his plaintive voice, lush arrangements, and pop smarts, Folds could have transformed himself into chartmaking star. But where you might expect a catchy hook, his compositions will instead take a sharp harmonic left into dark, moody corners, the way Costello's songs and Burt Bacharach's do. And he's a wise-ass whose tossed-off remarks can snap and sting with whiplike bitterness, a burned romantic who's suspicious of his or anyone's ability to express deep feelings without becoming vulnerable to the lash of irony-armored sophisticates like himself. This kind of harmonic and emotional layering makes for intricate, memorable songcraft but also radio silence.

Although this is Folds's first release since the demise of his misnomered trio (they made three albums and broke up more from lack of motivation than from the usual "creative differences"), it's his second solo release. In 1998, he made Fear of Pop, Volume 1 (Epic), a set of noisy experiments and joky fluff (notably two spoken-word tracks featuring William Shatner). Suburbs, on the other hand, sounds much like Ben Folds Five. The relative absence of guitar is more than compensated for by orchestral-sounding studio trickery and Folds's resonating piano, which booms with the force of his pounding left hand and the racing arpeggios of his right.

Suburbs is a set of character studies. Some are poignant, like "Carrying Cathy," about a spoiled girl who meets a poetically just fate, or "Still Fighting It," about a guilt-tormented dad trying to connect with his son over a fast-food meal. Others are sketchy and cartoonish in an '80s way: "Zak and Sara" (a teenage couple in 1984 who seem a more bored version of John Mellencamp's "Jack and Diane"), "Fred Jones Part 2" (a dirge for a worker laid off after 25 years -- echoes of Mellencamp and Springsteen again), and "The Ascent of Stan" (a routine thumbnail sketch of a textbook hippie-turned-yuppie that would seem novel if thirtysomething hadn't beaten this trope into the ground 15 years ago). But even these throwaway portraits are given (unearned) pathos and grandeur by Folds's unexpectedly majestic arrangements.

Then there's the irony-encrusted title track, a spoof so impossible to take seriously that he had Weird Al Yankovic direct the video. Folds compares the angry new metal of bands like Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park to such harmless '80s antecedents as Quiet Riot, Jon Bon Jovi, and Michael Jackson ("except that they were talented"); he mocks their musical limitations, unmerited angst ("You don't know what it's like/Being male, middle-class, and white"), and gratuitous use of profanity. But he's also poking fun at these elements in his own work. In the very next song, "Fired," a too timely tale of a company that cut loose all its employees, he suddenly lets loose, in four-part Beach Boys harmony, with the word "Motherfucker!" It's the most beautiful "Motherfucker!" you'll ever hear, a gesture both crass and heartfelt, and as apt a summation of Folds's work as any.

Ben Folds performs this Sunday, September 15, at Lupo's. Call (401) 272-LUPO.

Issue Date: September 14 - 20, 2001