Dept. of Collabos......

Ben Folds's next album will feature lyrics by Nick Hornby. Folds talks about taking a back seat to both the words and the sounds the words needed. (Paste)

Paste: Were you in the studio acting as producer, or did you have someone helping you with it?

Folds: I was the producer, and we kept an uncomfortable amount of space in the recordings as we tracked them. We would track very live, but then we would leave assloads of space, and the reason I did that is because I love Paul Buckmaster’s arrangements, but he’s very busy. He normally gets tossed onto a very full track, and I just thought this could be really powerful if we left an uncomfortable amount of space.

Paste: You mean space with the instrumentation?

Folds: Yeah, just bars of not much going on, but keeping the energy, you know? Make sure it’s not dying. But then, people would hear it as it was being worked on and always weren’t so sure why it was so minimal. Now, I think it’s just right. Paul just went Hiawatha on that shit [laughs].