Tuesday 23/01/07 Ben Folds @ Hammersmith Apollo, London

I arrive in time to hear support Clem Snide’s acoustic take on Christina Aguilera’s ‘Beautiful’. Such calculatedly witty / determinedly revisionist cover versions are part-and-parcel of smug acoustic songwriter territory. In fact, the last Ben Folds album, 2006’s ‘Supersunnyspeedgraphic’ was a rarities compilation with a healthy smattering of just these sort of cover versions, from the understandable (a jaunty version of The Cure’s ‘In Between Days’) to the plain mad (Dr. Dre’s ‘Bitches Ain’t Shit’).

In fact, it’s the last of these cover versions that throws Ben Folds, and by extension tonight’s gig, into a stark, cynical light. I know that yes, by covering a track that embodies the negative aspects of hip-hop in such a deadpan style Folds is attempting to send up gangster rap and its cliches, as well as amusingly pointing at the white male’s fascination with the genre, but the end result is about as perceptive as Tenacious D. It doesn’t work because it’s not funny, and any serious points are lost in an air of patronisation that Ben’s geeky, cerebral persona does little to dispel. So that’s the bad side to Ben Folds.

The great part comes directly after, as the rest of his band walks off and Ben is left alone at the piano. The ‘thrill’ for this crowd of hearing a white guy actually sing the word “****” and “glock” is swiftly replaced by an air of wonderful melancholy as ‘Fred Jones Part 2’, (a song that makes you feel as heavy and pathetic as the guy in the song who gets forgotten in the cruel onslaught of time), silences the Apollo into taking a collective moment. These are the areas in which he excels, and they’re certainly not in too short supply.