Fear of Pop: Volume 1

(as reviewed by H)

Fear of Pop: Volume 1 is a expiremental recording project by Ben Folds made under the name of "Fear of Pop"

Fear of Pop: Volume 1: 8/10

Fear of Pop
This song serves as a pretty good opener for the album. The different rhythm/percussion is very catchy. The lyrics make absolutely no sense to me which is pretty standard for this album. 8/10

Kops
A high stakes cop chase in musical form. Love the bass and the way the energy exponentially increases. 7/10

Slow Jam '98
Very calm as you'd expect, the harmonies in the vocals are nice, and the song as a whole is very dynamic. The usage of spliced clips of string instruments is very unique. 8/10

Blink
I'm not even sure what this is. Decent ambience. 4/10

In Love
I like all of the distorted samples, and Shatner's monologue is pretty good. Feels like something from a movie. It might be. I'm not sure. 8/10

Interlude
Not much to say about this one. Short little break from the action I suppose. 5/10

Avery M. Powers Memorial Beltway
The song starts off a little weird, with the clip of Ben singing chopped up in weird ways, but as the song goes along it turns into some really nice chords. Not my favorite track, but still worth something. 7/10

I Paid My Money
This is my favorite song on the album. The lyrics are silly as hell, but the rhythm and instruments are insanely catchy to me. Man I love this song. 9/10

Rubber Sled
This one starts off with a little skit, and then turns into a song kinda. What's he afraid of? POP?? (thats a reference to the album, get it?) It continues the absurd energy of the previous track and fits the album, but I don't think anybody would go out of their way to listen to it. 4/10

Root to This
This one's alright, nothing about it really stood out to me that much. Not that bad though. 6/10

Still In Love
A decent ending to the album and a nice continuation of the motifs from "In Love" 6/10

I really like this album. Folds' production is very unique on this album, as it's an expiremental project. I love how every song sounds like a scene from its own movie, but all the songs still flow into each other as a cohesive album. The songs on this album are long, but they never felt like they were wasting my time with their length. Overall I was pleasantly suprised on my listenthrough.