Melody props up the wise-guy lyric. Or, perhaps, it's the other way around. The sellout crowd recalls and sings along to the snot-nosed sentiments regardless of the pretty music. Which is it? It's a question to consider while rushing home from the Ben Folds show at Bogart's Thursday night.

        The show, a sellout, was originally scheduled for 8 p.m. That time was pushed up a half-hour so it would end by 10, giving the crowd time to beat the 11 p.m. Cincinnati curfew.

        When it comes to the gift of producing a ready-made melody, Mr. Folds is as blessed as anybody working in modern rock. And he has a million: He and his three-man band filled a 90-minute set with a bunch of them from his new solo album, Rockin' the Suburbs, barely dipping into his back catalog.

        It's also widely held that Mr. Folds is a wit. The fact that he's a baby-grand piano-playing front man sets him apart from about 100 percent of his modern-rock peers. His Web site bio compares him to Randy Newman, but Mr. Folds' is a sense of humor of a totally different, more obvious sort. For example, his recently disbanded group, Ben Folds Five, was named as such despite the fact they were a trio — not exactly the kind of joke on the level of Mr. Newman's black humor.

        Mr. Newman's songs are portraits of the common man's oddness, painted with devastating strokes. Many of Mr. Folds' selections also took aim at the little guy. Some of the stuff was funny, like the angry white teen-ager of “Rockin' the Suburbs” and the midlife-crisis victim of “Hiro's Song.” But they were funny in a “Weird Al” Yankovic whoopie-cushion way, not in the style of the masterful Mr. Newman.

        Even Mr. Folds' less fanciful statements, such as the self-explanatory “Song for the Dumped,” looked for the easy laughs — “Give me my money back, you (expletive),” went the chorus.

        These songs were among the more rocking ones, but nothing out-rocked a version of Lynyrd Skynyrd's “Sweet Home Alabama,” which says a lot about either Mr. Folds or a lot about Skynyrd.

        Although he broke a string during the first song and threw his stool at the keys at the conclusion of his last, Mr. Folds wasn't what you'd call a rocker of the Jerry Lee Lewis variety. For the most part he seemed more content to let the melodies and the wit carry the show.

        By playing piano, he's a novelty. If he were a guitar player, he'd have much more direct competition, and where that would leave him is another question worth thinking about.

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