The Garde Arts Center is proud to share that Ben Folds will perform at the Garde Theater at 325 State Street in New London on Tuesday, June 13, 2023 at 7:30 p.m. as part of the What Matters Most tour. Tickets range from $55-$85 and are available at https://gardearts.org/events/ben-folds/. Ben Folds: What Matters Most Tour featuring: Tall Heights at The Garde
Folds wields humor and pathos with surgical precision as he walks a delicate tightrope between the ridiculous and the mundane. The playful “Exhausting Lover” spins a surreal caricature of rock and roll debauchery over an utterly addictive groove, while the melancholic “Clouds With Ellipses” ruminates on the distinctly modern rhythms and anxieties that come with sharing our most intimate, vulnerable selves via text, and the spare “Kristine From the 7th Grade” watches an acquaintance retreat into their own reality of political misinformation and culture war nonsense.
The dreamy “Back To Anonymous” embraces the unexpected freedom of a world in which everyone is masked; the off-kilter pop of “Winslow Gardens” loses track of the passing time while isolating with a loved one; the aching title track “What Matters Most” finds new perspective in the face of tragic loss. By the time we arrive at radiant closer “Moments,” it’s clear that transcendence is always within reach, no matter how unlikely it may seem.
ABOUT TALL HEIGHTS:
The third full-length from Tall Heights, Juniors emerged from a period of profound turmoil and revelation for the Massachusetts duo. In the span of five months, Paul Wright and Tim Harrington experienced a convergence of events. The result: an album that precisely channels the pain, uncertainty, and unbridled joy of its inception.
As they set to work on Juniors, Harrington and Wright discovered an unexpected outcome of the loss that they’d endured: a shift in mindset that enabled them to embrace a boundless curiosity and exploratory spirit even more powerful than when they first formed Tall Heights. In a nod to the wide-eyed perspective that arose from the album’s creation, the duo chose a title evocative of youthful wonder.
Looking back on the tumultuous year that gave rise to their latest album, Harrington and Wright note that they’ve adopted the Juniors outlook as something of a spiritual ethos: a realization that every new endeavor will undoubtedly present new challenges and extraordinary surprise, ultimately reminding them that they are still but juniors.
