In all my years of listening to music, I don’t believe I’ve ever been presented with as tantalizing a collaboration as Lonely Avenue, the new album featuring lyrics by novelist Nick Hornby set to music by Ben Folds.

Collaborations within a single genre are common, but to have my favorite writer combine forces with one of my favorite musicians… talk about an unexpected delight.

Hornby has long been a fan of Folds’ work (I remember reading his essays about Ben Folds Five back in the Whatever and Ever Amen days) and that appreciation turned into a friendship, which led to an email correspondence that evolved into the partnership we now get to hear fully realized.

Folds is hardly an Elton John in need of a Bernie Taupin. He is a fabulous lyricist in his own right. Benching him as a wordsmith for this record is a bit like sitting a star running back after picking up another star running back. You’re going to wonder what you’re missing when he’s not getting his carries. But, truth be told, Folds’ lyrics felt a bit lazy on his last effort, Way to Normal, so perhaps he welcomed the chance to take the back seat on this one.

As a lyricist, Hornby’s sensibility is very similar to Folds’. If I didn’t know this was a collaboration, I probably never would have guessed Folds didn’t write these lyrics himself (the stray mentions of London aside). Folds has always embraced short stories in song form and that’s exactly what Hornby is doing here. Both men have a knack for finding meaning and emotion in life’s mundane details and they both have a penchant for conversational profanity.

Folds is a songwriter who normally starts with the music and writes words to fit, so he’s working outside of his comfort zone here. But given the challenge of writing music for existing lyrics, he’s really pulled out the stops and concocted an aural delight. These 11 songs run the gamut from orchestrated ballads to punk, straight-up rockers to deadpan smooth R&B.

This unique collaboration apparently inspired Hornby to explore the creative process itself. Many of these songs are directly or indirectly about writing, either songs or literature.

Opening track ‘Working Day,’ a quirky mini-suite worthy of Queen, traces the thought process of an artist who goes from believing he’s a genius to a bum in the course of a minute and a half. In the bridge, they take a shot at geeks like me: “Some guy on the net thinks I suck and he should know, he’s got his own blog.”

‘Saskia Hamilton,’ a devilishly hyper-kinetic ode to an obscure poet, has lyrics that could make an English major wet his pants: “She’s got more assonance than she knows what to do with… she got two sibilants, no bilabial plosives… my teacher just told me that she’s dactylic!”

That song is a partner to another tribute track, ‘Doc Pomus.’ Featuring one of Folds’ signature rapid, rolling piano lines (think a more syncopated version of ‘Mess’ or ‘Jesusland’), ‘Doc Pomus’ eulogizes the polio-stricken songwriter who penned classic tracks for Elvis Presley, Ray Charles and others. Pomus’ song ‘Lonely Avenue,’ mentioned in the song, later lent its name to the title of a Pomus biography and, of course, this album.

The best song about the artistic process — and the album’s best song, period — has to be the closing track, ‘Belinda.’ The main character of this song feels like he stepped out of the pages of a Hornby novel. He’s an aging rocker whose audience demands his biggest hit, ‘Belinda,’ at every show. He’s sick of singing it, not least because of how horribly he botched his relationship with the woman it’s about, so he imagines new lyrics to the chorus in his head:

Folds outdoes himself on this track, delivering a chorus that echoes the tune of what could have been a 70s classic. The liner notes include an email correspondence between Folds and Hornby in which he describes struggling to find the answer to the puzzle posed by Hornby’s lyric. It’s a nice glimpse at the nature of their collaboration.

The remaining tracks are more personal in nature, ranging from a tale of a mother at the hospital with her sick son on New Year’s Eve, struggling not to have her hopes raised by the beautiful fireworks display outside his window, to a ditty about a politically correct liberal who is struggling to see eye-to-eye with his menacing tattooed neighbor.

The most effective lyric (and one of the most effective songs overall) is ‘Claire’s Ninth,’ the story of a little girl celebrating her birthday for the first time since her parents’ divorce. In the verse she laments that they came in two cars “when they agreed one” and is mortified when her father flirts with the waitress. But the chorus flips to the parents’ perspective, with the final words actually choking me up a bit as I read them:

On the other end of the sentimental spectrum is ‘Levi Johnston’s Blues,’ a sympathetic tribute to a young man caught up overnight in a political soap opera. Folds gives the song a sleek, jazzy arrangement that explodes into a stadium singalong chorus pulled (literally) from Johnston’s MySpace page:

I’m sure Johnston never expected to see those words turned into such a catchy tune.

Lonely Avenue is the best work Ben Folds has released in years. It’s easily the equal of his first two solo albums. I don’t know how much of that credit belongs to Hornby, whose work here feels more vital than in several of his full-length novels. It seems both men have brought out the best in each other with this project.

I don’t know if this is a one-off or the beginning of a working relationship, but I hope it’s the latter. Perhaps Folds could try his hand at crafting songs for another novelist-turned-lyricist, or Hornby could pen lyrics for another musician? It’s a fun exercise in ‘mix and match’ but it feels like cheating. The fact that this partnership already feels so natural is a testament to the unlikely gem they’ve created.

In an interview, Folds had this to say about Lonely Avenue: “With some albums the comet goes by and you grab it while it’s passing and everything you do has some comet dust on it. This is one of those albums, and I don’t often say that.”

The rest of us are lucky to be along for the ride.