Our favorite sardonic and geeky alt rocker is back, but this time he’s bringing friends.

In a move fitting of only Ben Folds, he is putting out his first official “greatest hits” album, but instead of him performing them, he has gotten some of the best a cappella from universities and high schools around to help him out with “Ben Folds Presents: University A Cappella!” For those unfamiliar with a cappella bands, the concept is to perform full songs, without any instruments other than your own body. Everything you hear is snaps, claps, stomps, whistles and of course vocals.

The album contains 16 of Folds’ tracks, re-imagined by some of the best minds colleges have to offer. Overall the album isn’t subtle or soft. The idea of a cappella leads to a very full sound, even if the original might have just been Ben and a piano.

As for track selection, most everything a Folds fan would be looking for is there. Notable omissions however are “Annie Waits”, “Rockin’ the Suburbs” and “Smoke”. Folds even gets in on some of the fun, performing on new versions of “Boxing” and “Effington”, two songs from different times in his career. While “Effington” shines, “Boxing” falls flat. Maybe it’s just too old for Foldsto redo, but it’s one of the worst tracks on the album.

Standout tracks include a fantastic job on “Selfless, Cold, and Composed” by the Sacramento State Jazz Singers. They handled the instrumental ending in a way that rivals the haunting original even though they managed to put some different varieties on the vocal music, by incorporating a lot of choral style hymns and even some scat singing. The other big surprise was “Evaporated,” which strays farthest from the original, but because of that fact, it isn’t bound by one’s own preconceptions. As expected, “Army” might be the best overall track on the album. It’s upbeat humor matches perfectly with the very idea of college-style a cappella. The translation is flawless, and this version might even surpass the original. The end cap on this album is a simple but great take on “The Luckiest,” which wraps up the whole album excellently.

Unfortunately, while these songs are all done pretty well, they do lose something in translation. Part of the reason the Ben Folds has been successful is that half his songs are fun, ironic and playful while the others are truly sad and sometimes even a bit disturbing. No song suffers more from this then “Fred Jones Part 2″ which is a song that invokes true hate towards the frantic pace of life and one man’s struggle with being replaced. However, this version almost seems happy and doesn’t inspire the same feelings that the original did. Technically, it’s fine and one of the better arrangements, but it lost its meaning and soul once you removed Folds’ shaking voice and timid piano. While it is not the fault of anyone involved, it’s hard to portray the weariness that the originals had using this format. Additionally, each individual song is certainly listenable, but as a whole, it is a lot for people who aren’t normally fans of a cappella.

It is still a “must buy” for fans of Folds’ music and fans of a cappella. Any big Ben Folds fan would be wrong to look over the album simply because it’s a “greatest hits” style compilation. Any a cappella fan should also look into this, because it’s a great selection of different styles and takes on one artist. However, if you’re just a casual fan, or someone looking to jump on the Ben Folds bandwagon, I’d suggest going to the classics like “Rockin’ the Suburbs” or “Whatever and Ever Amen” or even his newest work “Way to Normal”. It’s not perfect but Ben Folds has never been about being perfect. He’s about being creative and going outside the normal. This is just a different way of doing that.

Some may consider a cappella nothing more than a joke of modern popular culture, but the practice of singing without instrumental backup has become more popular than ever, with fans swarming toward unique versions of hit songs. The number of college a cappella groups — always an incubator for this genre — is skyrocketing nationally.

“I understand why people make fun of it,” said Mickey Rapkin, author of the book “Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory,” in a recent interview. “It’s a group of guys sitting around singing Justin Timberlake songs without instruments. But there’s revenge. They’re laughing too, but they’re laughing all the way to the bank.”

Boston is home to several college and semiprofessional groups, including Overboard, which consists of eight men living out the dream of rock stars, complete with gigs, fans and recording albums, when they’re not at their full-time jobs.

But don’t compare this contemporary a cappella group and others like it to those glee clubs your grandparents knew, with four people standing around a microphone singing barbershop tunes, or the Tone Rangers full of sexually ambiguous men.

The men of Overboard, who range in age from 23 to 31 and balance their regular lives with their singing commitments, take the hits of artists like John Mayer, All American Rejects, Rob Thomas and Fall Out Boy and recreate the original songs’ rhythm and feel using just the sound of their voices.

“The thing I really like about a cappella is that you don’t need any equipment to do it,” said 29-year-old Nick Girard, who founded Overboard in the summer of 2006. “I don’t like to use the word organic, but it’s really such an easy, spontaneous thing to do.”

Arranging a cappella, however, is no longer as simple as gathering individuals to sing a song. Not all songs are compatible with the style of a cappella, and writing the score or rote memorizing the compilation can take days for some groups.

Girard said a song with a strong chord-based foundation lends itself to a cappella better than a song with the guitar and bass playing repetitive and similar notes.

When he arranges a song for a cappella, Girard said, he generally starts by concentrating on the bass and then bringing in the sounds of the other instruments, like the guitar or piano.

“You have to figure how many people are in your group and how many notes you need to represent to make your song sound like the real thing,” he said.

The common sounds used in a cappella to mimic the rhythms of background music include “ooh”s for softer sounds, and “ah”s “dum”s, “do”s and “jen”s for hard sounds.

But why bother making the human voice sound like an instrument when computer technology can manipulate sounds and certain instruments can modernize even the most classic works of music? Is a cappella even relevant today?

“The point is to entertain other people and to entertain yourself,” Rapkin said. “Why would technology keep people from singing together? You don’t need to set up; you just need your friends.”

Old school a cappella was primarily based on barbershop quartets singing jazz, but in the 1990s, the all-male group Rockapella seemed to reinvent the art form, channeling the theme that all sounds would be provided by the members’ “voices and appendages.”

Today’s groups incorporate contemporary music into their repertoires and make each performance “an exercise in how…close the human voice can come to real instrumental music,” Gerard said.

“It definitely has a certain charm to it, and it’s always well-received no matter who we sing to,” he added. “Turning popular music and being able to perform it the way we do is an interesting novelty that a lot of people haven’t seen. And there is a lot of money to be had. It’s family friendly and extremely portable.”