Deaf Girl's Soundtrack To Life: Ben Folds, yMusic, Tallest Man on Earth, Marcus Mumford, Punch Brothers

THE DYING DEAF GIRL’S SOUNDTRACK TO LIFE: Album Two

After writing a pseudo-memoir of the same name (which only lasted 3 chapters as a pandemic test-experiment, but was paused because… well, I’m someone who gives not just the cow away for free at the expense of my body, but an entire herd of cattle), this is essentially my greatest dream on earth:

To be a Deaf human with a music column.

Not be a “music critic” (because I think the very subjective nature of art means that word should be outlawed), but a music suggester.

After working as an Artistic Director and founder of a large scale, professional, dance theater company on the East Coast for the better part of the last 8-or-so years, I essentially “scored’ 2-hour shows to our non-verbal, body-language original stories as one would a movie. We even called them “movement movies” at times, and made cinematic dance films (my hope for the return of the silent film one day) with each.

After 10 shows and with 10 in the pipeline - complete soundtracks and complete new narratives- our canon of songs can’t be everyone’s cup of tea all the time… but they WERE a polite stab at the ableist thinkers out in the world who don’t realize a Deaf human could (and should!) be a Music Supervisor on a film one day.

But since that’s not this day (that would be written by The The, after all), sit back, pour a big cup of Loudermilk, pretend I am the Cameron Crow to your Rolling Stone ride (except not a teenager), and please let me score the mood of your month?

“THE SONG THAT FEELS LIKE THE PG13 JOKE YOU’VE BEEN HOLDING BACK YOUR ENTIRE LIFE BUT HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO SAY SINCE YOU HAD KIDS 15 YEARS AGO AND NOW YOU FINALLY CAN”

“Exhausting Lover” by Ben Folds

Sometimes I think the world is divided into two types of people: Those who love Ben Folds when he was attached to the number 5 and not a major TV network….and those who make jokes at the expense of jam bands. (“Like, we get it. It’s so funny to talk about Dave Matthew’s orgasm face when he plays the guitar. Haha. I’m so laughing”.) Is Ben Folds a jam or a band? He is neither… but he is someone who (unlike the additionally played out Nickleback punch lines when really, why aren’t we coming for Creed that hard with credence?) is IN on his own joke. Or at least he’s at his very best when that’s the case.

To me, Ben Folds is the most Ben Folds when he’s showing off his Chopin chops and reminding the world that’s rife with Millenialistic era comedic jagged little pills to swallow, that he IS, in fact, ridiculously skilled when he’s composing. (Can you tell that if another person uses Maroon 5 in their stand-up set, I will slap a man? You don’t even have to like a band to get tired of the people who like disliking bands more than liking anything).

Some of my favorite works of his are “Concerto for Piano and Orchestra” with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra (not unlike how some of my favorite works of Rufus Wainwright are when he was with Amsterdam Sinfonietta, but we shall save “Arachne“ and “Who By Fire“ for another column). Whether hammering the keys hard with Rocketman underpinnings like “Hiroshima”, or just getting out of his potentially pretentious way and simplifying to dulcet lullabies like “Gracie” or “Landed”, that’s how I like Ben to pen.

I could write an actual opus on how many of his songs I love (and considering I’m Deaf, there is a Mr Holland joke of my own to be made somewhere in there), but to put it far too tightly, Ben Folds is his most beautiful when he is using humor, or when he is using heart (even if you’re not a bff with BFF).

Okay, so if I love a lot more Ben Folds than five…. Why am I choosing THIS song, of all the songs to riff on? Honestly… There is no good reason. I just was playing it a lot recently and any lyricist who works the sentence “low, bored monotone vocal fry” into the first few bars deserves a slow clap. Every time that Ben Folds gets back into his sardonic symphonies (satires like “Bitch Went Nuts“, “Effington”,  “There’s Always Someone Cooler Than You”, “Army”, “Rockin’ The Suburbs” or “Your Redneck Past“ wherein the butt of the “But what’s the joke?” to the youths not yet learned in his ways IS himself). He is sort of like if Ed Sheeran started proudly rapping on a house-boat in his early 20’s again; beautifully naive to how f*cking cruel the world is about to be to him... which is a sad turn for this paragraph to take.

This might be worthy of a sidebar moment, even though my parents DO in fact subscribe and will in fact read this, but… I love smutty songs. Not ones that are filthy for filth’s sake (although looping back to Dave Matthews to say: That man can craft a saucy poem), but those who slap the cheek to be cheeky. “Exhausted Lover” is a lot like “Neighbor Song” by Lake Street Drive, or even “Awkward” by San Cisco (which isn’t smutty at all, but is cheeky), and of course the “hell no” refrain is catchy enough to bring to mind literal “Hell No” by Ingrid Michaelson, but not so repetitive that I want to click the song off after 2 choruses which I’m often inclined to do. (Fun Fact: I prefer layers in my songs as a Deaf person, just like a hearing person with… a distaste for redundancies. A “hook” is not a hammer, you know?)

If you need some homework, I would tell pupils to go and review a more recent Ben Folds partnership with yMusic that brought about the song “So There”, which is a little appreciated but top-of-the-class example of Folds unfolding the best of himself into a wiser, smoother sound (that Elton piano paired with the strings gets me from go). One of my other favorite “softer” artists (although somehow this entire column was soft-sounding-sounds this week, and by that I mean: Did not include Trent Reznor in any way) is The Tallest Man on Earth, who flourished in a new way when joined with yMusic too, but… More on that below!

For now, know the following: You can try to escape your fictional redneck past as much as you’d like, but when you lean into comedy in music and seriously don’t take yourself too seriously… No one can laugh at the subjectivity that isn’t all that funny anyways.

“THE SONG THAT FEELS LIKE A BREEZE BLOWING IN THROUGH AN OPEN WINDOW ON A WARM RAINY DAY AS YOU’RE PREPARING TO READ THE FIRST 4 PAGES OF A MAGNILOQUENT NOVEL YOU’LL NEVER FINISH, AND SOMEWHERE, SOME SORT OF BARREL IS SOAKING SOMETHING”

“Revelation Blues” by Tallest Man on Earth and yMusic