Success has been a long time coming for Ben Folds Five. Naked Baby Photos helps show how exactly the band has gotten this far. Ben Folds Five has a knack for both the gorgeous and the silly. "Eddie Walker" and the live version of "Boxing" show the gorgeous as well as "The Ultimate Sacrifice" and the live version of "Underground" show off just how much fun these guys are having. The engineers might have left the tape deck while the band committed it's first rap/funk improv tune to tape, but "For Those of Ya'll Who Wear Fanny Packs" kept me listening just to see how long they could keep it up.

Half of the sixteen tracks on Naked Baby Photos are available elsewhere in different incarnations on either movie soundtracks or the first two albums, with the other half made up of hard to find b-sides and unreleased material. It provides a good mix of the familiar and the new. The alternate takes on the previously-released songs, either live or demos, show where the songs come from and how the band shaped its sound. The unreleased tracks give dedicated fans better recordings of great songs they've heard before. Still, the album might not interest all those fans who were amused by "One Angry Dwarf" and who just caught hold of "Brick." Music is funny that way. Naked Baby Photos might be preaching to the choir, but I, for one, am glad to be singing along.