BEN FOLDS & NICK HORNBY Lonely Avenue (2010 UK 11-track CD album - 'Lonely Avenue' is a unique, words-and-music collaboration by Ben Folds & Nick Hornby. A project sparked by the long-distance friendship that developed after Hornby published '31 Songs' [his 2002 collection of music-themed short pieces], London-based Hornby supplied the words, which Nashville resident Folds then set to music in the vintage, orchestra-sized studio he'd rescued from oblivion and has been working in for the last ten years. 'Lonely Avenue' offers equal measures of humour and pathos in often deceptively cheerful songs. Folds literally gives voice to Hornby's endearingly mixed up, lovelorn characters. An aging pop singer has to endlessly & agonizingly reprise his one hit, a paean to a woman he left years ago, to the fans who still attend his shows ['Belinda']. A mother deliberately avoiding a stunning view of New Years Eve fireworks as she ministers to her seriously ill child in a London hospital ['Picture Window']. Hornby reconstructs the world of crippled, Brill Building-era songwriter Doc Pomus circa 1962 ['Doc Pomus'], and imagines, with unexpected tenderness, the moment when Alaskan teenager Levi Johnston discovered he'd impregnated the newly announced vice-presidential candidate's daughter, Bristol Palin ['Levi Johnston's Blues']. The result is an 11-song set that's as playful as it is soul-stirring, and more than a little magical).