News

Piano-pounding alternative trio Ben Folds Five will revisit their first album this fall – both versions of their first album.

The group’s self-titled debut will be remastered and expanded on September 4, a year after its 30th anniversary mark. This 2CD or 180-gram 2LP release pairs that original album, featuring seminal tracks like “Underground” and “Philosophy,” with a mostly unreleased “Shelved First Attempt” featuring many of the same tracks (and a few others) recorded in an earlier session. Both sets will offer expanded liner notes featuring rare photos and commentary by Folds.

It may not have been palpable in 1995, when the band’s eponymous debut was released, but Ben Folds Five were about to carve an impressive niche in music subculture. Coming at a truly discombobulated time for alternative rock, following the death of Kurt Cobain and various attempts at lassoing the next big sound on major labels, the Chapel Hill, North Carolina-based Five – in fact a trio of singer/pianist Ben Folds, bassist Robert Sledge and drummer Darren Jessee – were doing things in truly unorthodox ways, lugging a Baldwin grand into the nation’s rock clubs and keeping listeners on their toes with a mix of immaculate popcraft and smart-ass lyricism. There wasn’t a guitar in sight – just Folds thwacking away at his ivories (occasionally launching his stool at the keyboard), the fuzzed-out low-end of Sledge and Jessee’s cracking percussion with a well-honed pocket.

But that wasn’t exactly the case on what the trio first delivered to Caroline Records. Given a five-figure budget, Ben Folds Five traveled to Philadelphia to record with Dave “Stiff” Johnson, who’d hit his stride as a producer for G. Love & Special Sauce. The “Shelved First Attempt,” recorded over three weeks, has indications of what made Ben Folds Five click with a devoted cult audience, from the goofy instrumental jam “Dick Holster” to an early attempt at the ballad “Evaporated” (which closed the band’s second album, 1997’s Whatever and Ever Amen). But its largely more mannered approach didn’t fully sit right with Folds and his bandmates, and so they trucked back to Chapel Hill and banged out a second four-day session with Archers of Loaf producer Caleb Southern that yielded what was finally issued.

The “Shelved First Attempt” versions have been newly remastered from a newly-sourced DAT copy in Folds’ personal archive. The disc’s versions of “Julianne” and “Evaporated” were previously released on a rarities-packed Folds retrospective in 2011; “Dick Holster” was similarly issued on the band’s 1998 odds-and-ends collection Naked Baby Photos, which also included Caleb Southern-produced versions of “Emaline” and “Eddie Walker.” (In addition to the Johnson-produced version of “Underground” available as a sampler off Shelved First Attempt – which will be released as a standalone digital product – the group has also made available their self-released debut single, including earlier versions of “Jackson Cannery” and “Eddie Walker” – the latter of which is digitally available here for the first time anywhere.

Ben Folds Five attained even greater cult status after subsequently signing to Epic Records and attaining a Top 10 alternative airplay hit with “Brick.” After their breakup in 2000, Folds embarked on a truly unpinnable solo career with volumes of pop albums, soundtracks, appearances on televised singing competition shows, and – until his outspoken resignation over the current political administration’s aims – an eight-year tenure as artistic advisor to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Ben Folds Five reunited for several tracks on that 2011 retrospective, and a follow-up album, 2012’s The Sound of the Life of the Mind, was a surprise Top 10 hit. Their last appearance together was in 2023, at a memorial for their late producer Southern – but the group has collectively signed 1000 copies of the new Ben Folds Five vinyl, and will, according to a press release, “further commemorate the milestone anniversary…with a hugely anticipated series of live performances.”

The newly expanded Ben Folds Five hits stores September 4, and pre-order links will be found below.

Ben Folds Five (30th Anniversary Edition) (Capitol/UMe, 2026)

2CD: Amazon U.S. (TBD) / Amazon U.K. (TBD) / Amazon Canada (TBD)
2LP: Amazon U.S. (TBD) / Amazon U.K. (TBD) / Amazon Canada (TBD) / uDiscover Music (signed)

Disc 1: Remastered album (released as Passenger/Caroline PSR 9501-2, 1995)

1. Jackson Cannery
2. Philosophy
3. Julianne
4. Where’s Summer B.?
5. Alice Childress
6. Underground
7. Sports & Wine
8. Uncle Walter
9. Best Imitation of Myself
10. Video
11. The Last Polka
12. Boxing

Disc 2: Shelved First Attempt

1. Underground
2. Julianne
3. Uncle Walter
4. Alice Childress
5. Evaporated
6. Dick Holster
7. Philosophy
8. Boxing
9. Emaline
10. The Last Polka
11. Eddie Walker

Tracks 2 and 5 released on The Best Imitation of Myself: A Retrospective – Epic/Legacy 88697 92683-2, 2011
Re-recorded version of Track 5 released on Whatever and Ever Amen – 55o Music/Epic BK 67762, 1997
Track 6 and re-recorded versions of Tracks 9 and 11 released on Naked Baby Photos – Caroline CAR 7554, 1998