The Sound of the Life of the Mind | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Studio album by | ||||
Released | September 18, 2012 | |||
Recorded | January - February 2012 | |||
Genre | Alternative rock, power pop | |||
Length | 44:34 | |||
Label | ImaVeePee Records | |||
Producer | Joe Pisapia [1] | |||
Ben Folds Five chronology | ||||
| ||||
Singles from The Sound of the Life of the Mind | ||||
|
Aggregate scores | |
---|---|
Source | Rating |
Metacritic | (61/100) [2] |
Review scores | |
Source | Rating |
Allmusic | [3] |
Alternative Press | [4] |
American Songwriter | [5] |
The A.V. Club | B [6] |
Consequence of Sound | [7] |
Drowned in Sound | (6/10) [8] |
musicOMH | [9] |
Pitchfork Media | (3.5/10) [10] |
PopMatters | [11] |
Slant Magazine | [12] |
Spin | (7/10) [13] |
Under the Radar | [2] |
The Sound of the Life of the Mind is the fourth studio album by Ben Folds Five, released on September 18, 2012. [14] It is the group's first release since 1999's The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner.
The album debuted at No. 10 on the Billboard 200, which is Ben Folds' first top ten album on the chart, selling 30,000 copies. [15] It sold 67,000 copies as of August 2015. [16]
In 2011, Ben Folds Five reunited to record three tracks for Ben Folds' The Best Imitation of Myself: A Retrospective . [17] Bolstered by the experience, the band reconvened in Folds' Nashville studio and recorded the bulk of the album over a six-week period between January and February 2012. [18] Following the main tracking session, the band met for a separate two-week session to record main vocals and a final one-week session for background vocals in the week prior to their Bonnaroo Music Festival appearance in June 2012. [19] All but two of the songs on the album are written by Folds. Darren Jessee wrote the song "Sky High" and author Nick Hornby provided unused lyrics from his 2011 collaboration with Folds on the album's title track. [18]
The band considered using producer Caleb Southern, who had produced their first three albums, but he was unavailable. [19] In his place, they turned to producer Joe Pisapia, a multi-instrumentalist and former member of the band Guster.
Of the sessions together, Folds noted that they have enough material for at least two more records. [20]
An unmastered version of the album's first single, "Do It Anyway", was released by Ben Folds on his official Facebook page on May 4, 2012, to kick off a grassroots effort to market and promote the album. [21] Though Folds was signed to Sony Music Entertainment's Epic Records for his solo work and Jessee was signed to independent label Bar/None Records with his band Hotel Lights, the reformed Ben Folds Five was unsigned. With no label to distribute their new album, on May 7, 2012, the group launched an interactive pre-sale campaign for the press and release of the album on PledgeMusic. The crowdfunding campaign reached 200% in its first week. [20]
The resulting initiative, ImaVeePee Records, partnered with Sony Music Entertainment to release the album worldwide. A portion of the funds generated by the campaign, by the total album sales, and by purchases of other Ben Folds Five items through PledgeMusic will be donated to Music Education and Music Therapy, a charity selected by the band. [22]
The fully mixed and mastered album version of "Do It Anyway" was released for digital download on August 6, 2012. In the two weeks leading up to the commercial release of the album, the band hosted full previews of each track via exclusive releases through various music media outlets, including Spin , [23] Conan O'Brien's TeamCoco.com, [24] AOL's Spinner.com, [25] Fuse, [26] Idolator, [27] Rolling Stone , [28] Paste , [29] Yahoo! Music, [30] and MSN's Reverb music blog. [31]
The video to "Do It Anyway", which premiered mid-September 2012, featured the puppets of Fraggle Rock , Chris Hardwick, Rob Corddry, and Anna Kendrick. [32]
The album cover features an exclusive piece entitled "Submerged" by artist Eric Joyner, noted for the focus on "robots and donuts" as the main subjects of his work. [33] An adaptation of his 2007 work, "The Collator", "Submerged" is a somber yet whimsical piece showcasing a toy robot sitting thoughtfully on a mossy undersea rock as fish swim about it. The image evokes French sculptor Auguste Rodin's renowned work The Thinker (Le Penseur).
More of Joyner's artwork is featured throughout the physical packaging of the album.
The single for "Do It Anyway" was originally released with artwork by Luther Mosher [34] until the full album was released. Afterwards the album art was attached to the single. It is still being used in some places for promotion. [35]
All tracks are written by Ben Folds except where noted [36] .
No. | Title | Lyrics | Music | Length |
---|---|---|---|---|
1. | "Erase Me" | 5:15 | ||
2. | "Michael Praytor, Five Years Later" | 4:32 | ||
3. | "Sky High" | Darren Jessee | Jessee | 4:42 |
4. | "The Sound of the Life of the Mind" | Nick Hornby | Folds | 4:10 |
5. | "On Being Frank" | 4:33 | ||
6. | "Draw a Crowd" | 4:14 | ||
7. | "Do It Anyway" | 4:23 | ||
8. | "Hold That Thought" | 4:14 | ||
9. | "Away When You Were Here" | 3:30 | ||
10. | "Thank You for Breaking My Heart" | 4:50 |
Chart (2012) | Peak position |
---|---|
Australian Albums (ARIA) [37] | 24 |
UK Albums (OCC) [38] | 40 |
US Billboard 200 [39] | 10 |
US Top Alternative Albums (Billboard) [40] | 3 |
US Top Tastemaker Albums (Billboard) [41] | 9 |
US Top Rock Albums (Billboard) [42] | 6 |
Rockin' the Suburbs is the debut studio album by American alternative rock singer-songwriter Ben Folds. His first solo album after leaving his band Ben Folds Five, Rockin' the Suburbs was recorded in Adelaide, Australia, where Folds was living at the time and was released on the same day as the September 11 attacks.
Ben Folds Five is an American alternative rock trio formed in 1993 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The group comprises Ben Folds, Robert Sledge and Darren Jessee. The group achieved success in the alternative, indie and pop music scenes. Their single "Brick" from the second album, Whatever and Ever Amen (1997), gained airplay on many mainstream radio stations.
Benjamin Scott Folds is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and composer, who is the first artistic advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., since May 2017. Folds was the frontman and pianist of the alternative rock trio Ben Folds Five from 1993 to 2000, and again in the early 2010s during their reunion. He has recorded a number of solo albums and performed live as a solo artist. He has also collaborated with musicians such as William Shatner, Regina Spektor, "Weird Al" Yankovic, and yMusic, and undertaken experimental songwriting projects with authors such as Nick Hornby and Neil Gaiman.
The Postal Service are an American indie pop supergroup from Seattle, Washington, consisting of singer Ben Gibbard, producer Jimmy Tamborello, and Jenny Lewis on background vocals.
Whatever and Ever Amen is the second album by Ben Folds Five, released in 1997. Three singles were released from the album, including the lead single, "Battle of Who Could Care Less", which received significant airplay on alternative radio and on MTV, and peaked at #26 on the UK Singles Chart and #22 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, and the band's biggest hit, "Brick", which was a top-40 song in numerous countries.
Darren Michael Jessee is an American drummer and singer-songwriter best known as a member of the alternative rock trio Ben Folds Five. Jessee has also worked as an instrumentalist for Sharon Van Etten and Hiss Golden Messenger and released two solo albums and four albums as singer and songwriter for indie band Hotel Lights. His first solo album, The Jane, Room 217, was released on August 24th, 2018, to near-universal acclaim from critics.
Ben Folds Five is the debut studio album by American alternative rock band Ben Folds Five, released on August 8, 1995. A non-traditional rock album, it featured an innovative indie-pop sound, and excluded lead guitars completely. The album was released on the small independent label Passenger Records, owned by Caroline Records, a subsidiary of Virgin/EMI. Ben Folds Five received positive reviews, and spawned five singles. The record failed to chart, but sparked an intense bidding war eventually won by Sony Music. Several live versions of songs originally released on Ben Folds Five reappeared later as b-sides or on compilations.
The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner is the third studio album by Ben Folds Five, released April 27, 1999. It represented a departure for the band from their usual pop-rock sound to material influenced by classical and chamber music, with darker, introspective lyrics on subjects such as regret, death, and loss of innocence. It was the final full-length album from the trio until the release of The Sound of the Life of the Mind in 2012. It was produced by Caleb Southern.
Rogue Wave is an indie rock band from Oakland, California, and headed by Zach Schwartz who created the band after losing his job in the dot-com bust. Their first album was Out of the Shadow which was released privately in 2003 and re-released in 2004. In the fall of 2004 they went on a national tour of the United States. Their most recent album, Cover Me, was released on February 17, 2017, through Easy Sound Recording Company.
Hotel Lights is an American indie rock band led by singer-songwriter Darren Jessee, the drummer for Ben Folds Five.
"Underground" is a song from Ben Folds Five's 1995 self-titled debut album. It was written by Ben Folds. The song is about geeks and social outcasts looking for solace in numbers in underground music and art scenes. It peaked at #37 on the UK Singles Chart. The track was #3 for the year of 1996 on Australia's Triple J Hottest 100.
A Little Bit Longer is the third studio album by the American band the Jonas Brothers and their second album released on Hollywood Records. It was released on August 12, 2008. The album received generally favorable reviews, and four star reviews from Rolling Stone, AllMusic, and Blender. The album was preceded by three singles, "Burnin' Up", "Lovebug" and "Tonight". The album was number 40 on Rolling Stone's Best 50 Albums of 2008. One of the songs from the album, "Video Girl" was also number 49 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Best Songs of 2008.
Family of the Year is an American indie rock band based in Los Angeles, California. It consists of members Joseph Keefe (vocals/guitar), Sebastian Keefe (drums/vocals), James Buckey (guitar/vocals), and Christina Schroeter (keyboard/vocals). Their music uses melodic male/female vocal harmonies and folktale-style lyrics. They are best known for their 2012 song "Hero", which was featured in Richard Linklater's 2014 film Boyhood and became a top 10 hit in Austria, Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland.
Young the Giant is an American rock band that formed in Irvine, California, in 2004. The band's line-up consists of Sameer Gadhia, Jacob Tilley (guitar), Eric Cannata (guitar), Payam Doostzadeh, and Francois Comtois (drums). Formerly known as The Jakes, Young the Giant was signed by Roadrunner Records in 2009, and they released their eponymous debut album in 2010. The band's first three singles, "My Body", "Cough Syrup", and "Apartment", all charted on the US Alternative Songs chart.
Whitechapel is the fourth studio album by American deathcore band Whitechapel. It was released worldwide on June 19, 2012, through Metal Blade Records. This is the first album to feature drummer Ben Harclerode. The album cover is an image of the Flag of Tennessee inside of the band's trademark saw blade.
Device was an American industrial metal band started by David Draiman, frontman of the heavy metal group Disturbed, and Geno Lenardo, former guitarist of Filter. They released one album, Device, in 2013.
The Contortionist is an American progressive metal band from Indianapolis, Indiana. Formed in 2007, the band consists of guitarists Robby Baca and Cameron Maynard, drummer Joey Baca, vocalist Mike Lessard, bassist Jordan Eberhardt, and keyboardist Eric Guenther. They have released four studio albums and three EPs. The band signed with eOne Music and Good Fight Entertainment in early 2010.
Device is the only studio album by American industrial metal band Device, a side project featuring David Draiman of Disturbed and former Filter guitarist Geno Lenardo. It was released on April 9, 2013, with their first single, "Vilify", out on digital download on February 19, 2013. The second single, "You Think You Know", was released on June 11, 2013.
Live is the first official compilation of live material by the band Ben Folds Five. It was released on June 4, 2013 via Ben Folds' own ImaVeePee Records and distributed by Sony Music Entertainment.
"Monsters" is a song by American rock band Shinedown. It was their third single from their sixth studio album Attention Attention. It reached the top of the Billboard Mainstream Rock Songs chart in June 2019. Upon reaching number one on the Mainstream Rock, Shinedown moved into second place for the most Mainstream Rock number ones with fourteen songs. "Monsters" was nominated for iHeartRadio's rock song of the year award.