The good news is that 2010 is the end of 80s nostalgia. Hopefully, never again we will have to look at a side ponytail or watch people do the “Safety Dance” drunk. The bad news is that we are at the dawn of 90s nostalgia. In the next ten years, we will see many a promising local band perform piss-poor Proclaimers covers; we will chug strange new beverages with strange new christenings like “Urkelbot” and “Long Island Lolita”; the Soundgarden and Pearl Jam records that everyone carefully avoided mentioning all through the august will begin inexplicably appearing in everyone's Top Fives; and we'll see even more side ponytails – apparently, that was a nineties thing, too. Overall, annoyance levels will maintain general homeostasis.

But the most interesting part of this upcoming love affair we will have with the 90s – besides speculating what goes into an “Urkelbot”, of course – will be to see which albums, bands, and songs become inexplicably popular in the wake of the nostalgia tsunami. I see this going in one of two directions:

1) We spend the next decade watching hipster douchebags dancing the Macarena ironically. This will be a disaster and if it does happen, I will attempt to circumvent the entire sad affair by defecting to Darfur until 2020. If you think that I have chosen this particular country so I could wile away the next ten years with selfless charity work, you are wrong. As I said, I will be avoiding the Macarena, and I assume that most people in Darfur do not own computers or iPods. From pictures I've seen in National Geographic, I would also assume many people in Darfur are far too hungry to dance.

2)We see a new generation of young people overlook Ben Folds' latter-day crimes – like doing a shitty cover of “Lost in the Supermarket” for the soundtrack of Over the Hedge – and embrace his late nineties' exercise in the grandiose, The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, an album whose opening track “Narcolepsy” bridges the gap between Folds' shrugged-shoulder delivery and his apparent aspirations to be more like Yanni.

Ben Folds' previous work may have suggested the possibility that his compositional aspirations might have some room to grow. But the space between the slow-tempo simple pop of a song like “Brick” and the symphonic, concussive power of, say, “Narcolepsy,” was not only an interesting development, but a pleasant surprise. Dreamlike piano waltzes are literally interrupted by the sounds of explosions as heavily distorted bass riffing, rapid fire drumming and a sweeping string section overtake the senses. Choruses move effortlessly from doo-wop backing to Tabernacle-style layering. Synths inexplicably show up. All of these elements together at once can overwhelm a listener almost to the point of spontaneous emotional outcry. It's a lot to cram into a pop song - which is probably why “Narcolepsy” is almost five and a half minutes long.

This song's length is ultimately it's biggest challenge. While the crescendo at the end works and is pleasant to listen to, realistically “Narcolepsy” could be cut short by at least a minute, if not more. Folds risks becoming annoyingly repetitive in his use of the phrase “I'm not tired” for over a minute. Furthermore, this reprise is heralded by the use of a synthesizer which we do not hear before or after it's brief appearance in the song. What is the point of this particular synthesizer track? It would seem nothing other than it sounded cool to Folds, and he was looking for any excuse to utilize it's unique noise.

Yet, the biggest flaw with “Narcolepsy” is that, aside from it's length, the song is too good. Listening to the rest of the album is not a terrible experience by any means. Each of the ten remaining songs are quite good in their composition and arrangement and would have very little trouble standing on its own, with the exceptional of “Hospital Song”, which would be far too short for a single. But the epic qualities of "Narcolepsy" are so big that they overshadow the rest of the album, including the upbeat “Army”. Putting “Narcolepsy” at the beginning of this album is like giving someone black tar heroin and then telling them to try and sustain their high with a bottle of cough syrup and bowl of dirt weed. But “Narcolepsy” isn't an example of one great song on a lackluster album – it's an example of one really great song kicking off an album which is merely good. That's not a bad thing, necessarily. The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner is still a great record – probably Ben Folds' best effort to date. But first-time listeners should be warned that it never gets quite as epic as on its opening track. Knowing this in advance, perhaps future audiences may relax and not quixotically chase the operatic dragon through ten other songs which don't deliver as big a punch.

Even still, listening to the late nineties of oeuvre of Ben Folds and his Five sounds a lot better than watching your stupid friends get drunk and perform bad Latin line-dancing at parties. If we have to ride that wave of 90s nostalgia, we can at least promise ourselves that we're going to do it right. Hoist your Urkelbots.