_At first the song “Brick,” in the easy delivery of the vocal, the warm shimmer of the acoustic piano, and the mournful cello line, sounds a little like Joe Jackson used to sound. But then you hear the voice slip into falsetto for the gloriously soaring chorus, which is somehow both triumphant and melancholy—“She’s a brick and I’m drowning slowly”—and you know that this is something else altogether.

Or maybe you’re already in the know, and you recognize the voice of Ben Folds, lead singer and songwriter for Ben Folds Five, the trio from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, who chose the designation “Five” because it sounds better with Folds than “Three.” You may also know that “Brick” is but one of many brilliant and beautiful songs from the group’s second album, Whatever And Ever Amen. And that with the simple foundation of Folds on acoustic piano, Robert Sledge on bass, and Darren Jessee on drums, Ben Folds Five has been stirring up more excitement lately than most of those big rock bands still relying on electric guitars.

Folds has said that he’s equally influenced by Cole Porter and the Clash, and this fusion of sensibilities resounds in his music. His songs run the gamut from the tender beauty of ballads like “Brick” and “Smoke” to the dynamic devotion of “Kate,” the wistful yearning of “Evaporated,” and the rocking rancor of hilarious “revenge anthems” such as “One Angry Dwarf & Two Hundred Solemn Faces” and “Song for the Dumped.”

Although Darren Jessee has co-writing credits with Folds on some of these songs, this is no Lennon-McCartney arrangement. In fact, it’s closer to the collaboration between John and Ringo, in that Folds often writes songs around phrases or fragments Darren dreams up, in the same way Lennon crafted songs around Ringo one-liners like “a hard day’s night.”

Raised in and around Chapel Hill, Folds started writing songs almost as soon as he could talk, and long before he learned to play the piano or any other instrument. “I can remember standing in line at the cafeteria waiting for square pizza in the second grade, and having a song in my mind,” he says. “And I thought it was the greatest song. I remember thinking, ‘That is a hit. That is a good song.’ ”

Many of your songs have such great opening lines. “Kate” starts with the line “She plays ‘Wipe-Out’ on the drums,” which is such a specific and funny opener.

The first line of a song usually ends up being transferred from somewhere in the middle of the song, because as I get into the song and I’m writing it, I find the thing that I’m writing about. And then I stick that at the top. I like a little rules-breaking to go on with the first line. Something that you don’t expect.

You’re someone who writes wonderfully rich melodies, the kind that few songwriters since Bacharach have written. He said he needs to get away from the piano to write good melodies. Do you find that to be true?

Well, yeah, the melodies don’t come out of the instrument. The melodies come when I’m walking around. [It] is something that is not determined by the chords to me, but comes from the melody itself. And then I harmonize it. And then there can be loads of ways of harmonizing it, and I just try to not cheese it up too much.

And is that where your songs start—with pure melody?

They come from the impulse that caused the melody. There’s a soundtrack, or a feel, to a given time, and if there’s nothing intense or poignant about that time, and there’s just nothing in the air, then, yes, I can make up a melody. But it’s not going to resonate with me at all.

The melody to “Brick,” for example, is beautifully sad. Did it come from a sad event in your life?

Yeah, but it’s the same kind of thing where it was all kind of coincidental. It was several things coming together at once. The first thing is that the chorus—“She’s a brick and I’m drowning”—was Darren’s, the drummer. He showed that to me a couple of years ago.

Music and words?

Music and words, yes, that’s Darren’s. He wrote that. In and of itself, out in the air, there it is. It never really meant anything. It had total capacity to be something. And he has a lot of songs that are at least that good. For parts. I’m into parts—ambiguous things that seem to feel and mean a lot of things. So I was thinking, That is kind of in my head now. It kept running through my head. I sat down at the piano one night and just started playing the intro to “Brick” and started singing the verse. And then I was realizing it was making me think of something else that was on my mind, this thing I went through in high school. And that’s the way it works. You just start to put it together.

Many songwriters do face-to-face collaborations every day, especially in Nashville.

It may be that they write great songs that way. I don’t get that at all. It’s such a personal thing, how can you do that? I almost think in a world free of copyrights Darren could come in and show me this “She’s a brick” chorus and I could write a song around it, and he could have another song that it came from and it could be the chorus to that song. And it would be two totally different songs to me, because it’s the way it’s put together and what it means within the context. And that’s why I can’t sit in front of someone and collaborate on a song, because how can you agree on that?

What did Darren think of “Brick” when you played it back to him complete?

I don’t know. I’ve never really gotten a response from him on any of my songs that I can remember.

So you don’t discuss the meaning of the songs with the guys in the band?

I did with him because I was trying to be responsible with it. He was a little concerned at the time that the bridge was coming to a dramatic conclusion that was maybe too heavy. And I did curb it just a little bit. But I was asking him for that advice because I wanted to be really responsible about putting out a song that is about an abortion. I felt that it shouldn’t at any time get any mileage from the subject, but just be about the feeling. So when it hit anything that was too dramatic, I wanted to know about that, because I didn’t want the drama to generate interest in the song. So I toned it down a little bit.

Your work is both crafty and inspired. Are both craft and inspiration of equal importance?

Inspiration is more important. I have to feel it. I have to really live in the thing for it to work. Where the craft comes in is where there’s a hiccup or a glitch. That’s why it’s good to know all the little composition things, even if you didn’t learn it in composition class. It bails you out sometimes and then it makes you get to where you can feel it. I don’t get into that first. It’s secondary for me. I have to feel it, and I hope that I never have to use my brain. And then your brain has to kick in like an emergency engine when you feel the song falling apart. We just did something for the Godzilla soundtrack called “Air.” And I really felt what I was writing. But then a lot of it started to fall apart at the seams, and I tried to kick my technical brain in to make that happen, but I didn’t have time to make that transition, and I had to turn the song in, and I’m so bummed. ’Cause I know it was going to be a great one, but that’s the f— ing business we’re in. There it is—it’s mastered and turned in already.

And you’re not happy with how it turned out?

I’m almost happy with how it turned out. I realized that I need a certain amount of time to put the glasses on and be a geek and then come back to it, and live with it. It’s funny you mentioned Burt Bacharach, because we’re doing a TV special with him and I’ve been talking to him every couple of nights. And every once in a while, you know, I’m younger than he is, I’ll sneak in a question to the master, which he totally is—and I was curious about his process, how long he takes. And I found that it’s really similar to mine. And if I had someone who was an amazing lyricist at my fingertips all the time, I would do exactly what he does. But having to write lyrics, for me, is tough.

But not melodies?

No, I could do that all week. I really could. I could just crank those out. That’s not a problem. When I see Bacharach’s output, and see how prolific he was—or is, I should say; he’s still writing his ass off—yeah, I envy that. But the words affect the music just so much that I feel I have to get my hand in on it.

Bacharach said that “music breeds its own inspiration,” that he’ll sit down not wanting to write, and the music itself will get him going.

Yeah, he’s just more diligent than I am. He’s got so much energy. He’s got a two-year-old and he’s seventy years old! I know he’s right. He’s right. But maybe I’m just from the slack set.

So, you’re the type who will wait for inspiration?

Yeah, and I’ll have the inspired part and it’ll happen, and I’ll start to work at it, and just at the moment that it turns into work and someone comes by and says, “Do you want to get a slice of pizza? Or go get a drink?”—I’m gone. And then I don’t finish it. That’s not a really good thing. Deadlines make me finish stuff.

Is it tough to reconnect with those songs that you left unfinished?

Yes. But sometimes it can be helpful. I think that is one thing I could relate to in the way Burt writes. By getting away from it and coming back to it—like putting it up in the light and stretching it. Yeah. I think that is kind of cool because it lends a depth to it. If you come back to it and the original thing is strong enough to open you back up to it—in that way you’re several people over the course of a year or a week, or whatever, and if you can reconnect with it in all those different personalities—then I think it’s that much stronger. In other words, if it’s not strong enough to get me back into it later on, it dies.

When I first heard “Smoke” I thought it was Joe Jackson. I’m sure you must be asked about him a lot.

I’m sure he probably was [an influence]. Part of the Joe Jackson thing is that my singing voice sounds like his, a little bit, and that’s hard to get away from. Also, we share a similar idea of composition. He’s into composition, but he’s a better musician than I am. I think I was probably influenced by him, but not as significantly as I was by Joni Mitchell or Elvis Costello or Rickie Lee Jones or Randy Newman. They’re probably all heavier inspirations. And I don’t agree with Joe Jackson about his arrangements. I much prefer a looser arrangement. He’s amazing with these tight arrangements with two notes coming out of everything, performed over and over again the same exact way. I just love pounding something out and mushing it together and having it be different every time. It’s probably just lazy. But I like the freedom of that. It’s why I always loved the Clash or the Replacements. That was freedom to me. As much as I get asked about him, I’m not sure it was that significant of an influence.

“Tom & Mary,” like “Brick,” gets a lot of mileage out of what is left unsaid.

Yeah. I went to a studio and the name of the people who owned it were Tom and Mary. I remember talking to someone and remember this sentence coming out, “For the benefit of Tom and Mary.” So I started piecing this story together in my head about people who go to a party. Everyone’s talking about them but the listener doesn’t know exactly what happened. There was a scandal or something. This is a subtext song. I just felt that with that sentence it would be all about the sub-text. I don’t even know what really happened in that song. I just thought it was funny. I thought the idea of everyone talking s— about Tom and Mary, about whatever this horrible thing was—and they don’t even know that everyone knows, and they walk up and everyone gets quiet—I just like situations like that.

Do you find that being from the South affects your writing?

Oh totally, yeah. In the band, we seem to be the only ones who think this: We are a Southern rock band. We’re such a Southern rock band, it kills me. And my songwriting—because most of the time it’s storytelling—yeah, I think it’s Southern. The South has got soul. It’s just about where all the good s— comes from, really. Whether it’s jazz or rock or blues or William Faulkner or R.E.M. The South proper—Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Tennessee, all of that—yeah, it’s got a lot of soul.