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by Joe Harvard A music critic - which one I can't recall -- once wrote about the Celtic concept of the Yargh, a transcendent, guttural howl that troubadours could only utilize effectively when they managed to reach down into a place somewhere between throat and soul. Or was that throat and balls? The guy was writing about Van Morrison, but what made me recall the article was listening to the latest Frames LP Burn the Maps. A few trips through my CD player was enough to convince me that Glen Hansard has developed his own form of the mysterious vocal technique, with a contemporary twist thrown in. Can you say "Altyargh?" Sure you can! If you were at any of several Jersey Shore shows the Frames have played in the last five years, you were probably as happy as I was that group seemed to be forming a home-away-from-home relationship with the area, and our humble burg in particular. I spoke with drummer Johnny Boyle after the Halloween, 2002 show at Asbury Park's BE Gallery, just long enough to tell him that his band reminded me a lot of the Pixies, circa the time when they recorded their first LP, Come On Pilgrim, at the studio I'd owned in Boston. "You should really talk to Glen, our singer, he's a huge Pixies fan ... I mean we all like them, but he loves those guys." As I was wearing a giant Slinky costume, AKA a seven-foot length of skyscraper insulation duct, I declined the opportunity to stay and chat in the puddle of perspiration rapidly forming beneath me, but at their next Asbury show I got the chance to tell Glen what I thought -- that the Frames were a consistently better live band than the Pixies had been back in their '87 Boston heyday -- an opinion I still hold, by the way, although the Pixies have now reunited as a far stronger live outfit than they've ever been. Glen displayed typical humility in pooh-poohing my suggestion, not surprising in that he freely admits how profoundly the Pixies had influenced his early music. Although the Frames have travelled far afield stylistically from Glen's fave teenage band, the Pixies reference is still important here, because what the Pixies did in a single song -- deceptively quiet verses punctuated by explosive choruses, with no quarter given by way of added filler between parts, even if it meant a beat or two got dropped along the way -- the Frames long seemed determined to do with their entire sets. Their recent press release for Burn the Maps tips it's hat to this tendency, noting the passing of "bi-polar swings, violently loud on one song, violently quiet the next." I have to confess, though, that while this schizoid inclination made for slightly uneven records, it made for some of the most jubilantly dynamic live sets anyone has played in the last decade. Still does, too. I left that first Halloween show at BE a convert to the Frames songwriting prowess, though I was decidedly skeptical after watching them sound check. There they were` teaching each other parts of not one but several songs, only minutes before the set started -- Geez, don't these guys know their own friggin' tunes, I wondered? As it turns out, the group's violinist Colm Mac Con Iomaire had dropped out of the tour due to a medical emergency the night before, so the rest of the band hustled to cover the fiddle parts. Sometimes, though, you can learn more about a band on an off-night, when the chips are down, than you can on their best night. What I saw that night was how compositional their songs were, and the amount of detail that had to be covered with the absence of a single member was a signpost indicating the depth of the band's writing. These guys weren't just throwing three or four chords together and cranking up the amps. There was precision here. Their approach was closer to a parts-based band like the Velvet Underground. Like that legendary outfit their dynamic approach was complex, layered, and veered from celestial beauty to subway-screech jarring -- while still managing to rock, and rock hard (another gratifying Velvets-like trait: their mensch-like willingness as individual musicians to cover parts they didn't normally play, rather than let a show die stillborn). As for those earlier "bi-polar" records, like Fitzcaraldo and The Roads Outgrown, the songs may have sometimes sat uncomfortably next to one another, like supermodels stripped naked on the subway, but they were each just as pleasing and worthy of individual attention as Cindy Crawford and Elle McPherson hanging from opposite straps on the F Train (if I could think of a male supermodel I'd mention him just to prove how feminist I am at heart, but all I can think of is that freak who does the butter commercials). In gaining uniformity, or in press release terms reconciling "their various personalities into one volatile organism", the Frames have stepped away from one tremendously interesting direction, and headed into new territory - a place no less intriguing, but one that would've been hard to predict based on the group's early records and live shows.Especially if, like myself, you were paying more attention to the rock thing and less to the often-microscopic detail of each person's parts - a fact I might have missed altogether had I not been there for that one atypical show. Hence Burn the Maps is a great title, but the question for long-time fans is: what will the new Frames map look like, and will they be able to find their way around the band's work with it? Each of the next shows I caught revealed more and more the subtleties the Frames were capable of. I went out and got their latest, but as strong an album as For the Birds was, it didn't really reveal the whisper-to-a-rocket launch dynamics that the Frames are masters of within their individual songs. I expected, with the same revolving team of three or four people ( Rob Bochnik and former guitarist David Odlum, who handled this record, as well as Craig Ward, Steve Albini) continually handling production chores, that this time out they'd have made a record that reveals to us, rather than understates, the real power this group is capable of live. In other words, a record worthy of one of the best live bands currently performing on Planet Earth. A record that Rocked Hard. This isn't that record. So what is it? For those of us waiting for Frames records to catch up with the power of Frames performances, it looks like the maps are truly gone -- from now on, we might have to start waiting for their live shows to catch up with the intricacy of their records. The set opens with "Happy", a distillation of the aural landscape about to be revealed. The cut lays down the Old Testament According to the Frames: follow the leader, be it crawling down below the noise floor or six-string repelling at breakneck speed straight up a Matterhorn wall of distortion -- with the role of leader generally being filled by Glen's guitar. It also sets the standard for the rest of the tunes on the record, and reveals some key Commandments of the New Testament According to the Frames: One, a song shall bear repeated listening before it reveals it's full strengths; Two, there shall be strings, yay, and beaucoup keyboards, and they shall be up front in the mix; and Three, verily, the band will revel in the kind of flirting with dissonance that we expect more from a band like Radiohead -- indeed, this cut could be Radiohead. A few of the songs that are highlights of Maps still harken back to Glen's Pixies-loving days: "Fake", with its majestic guitar builds, and "Underglass", which provides the sort of simple, catchy bass lines that Kim Deal has made her trademark. "Ship Caught in the Bay" evokes one of the lesser-known Richie Havens ballads -- in particular the brilliant "Young Girls Don't Run Away" comes to mind, while the Whirling Dervish climax of "Keepsake" is an ideal set-closing candidate. "Caution" is perhaps the most lyrically powerful contribution on this record, while the single "Finally" shines, with a rhythm track to parade march to and a passionate vocal performance, the thing that got me thinking about Altyargh in the first place (see? sometimes I actually manage to get back to my opening point). Whether you feel this is the penultimate Frames LP, or a step backward from For the Birds on the road to the Frames Promised Land, depends on how comfortable you are with the new map the band is creating. Make no mistake, this is one beautiful record; like the work of another great contemporary songwriter, Joe Pernice of the Pernice Brothers, it sounds better with every listening. It's up to the group's older audience to decide if the key landmarks on the band's new cartography are ones they can follow back to the band they loved through the last four studio albums. For those who feel lost as the Frames turn down the Rock knob, there's always Headlong, their live Australian tour LP, which captures the band rocking at their compositionally schizophrenic best; if Burn the Maps is an indication of future direction, that may also be the rocking-est record the group'll make with their current line-up. But previous fans who are afficionados of great songwriting and new fans just discovering the band are sure to revel in this beautifully detailed, powerfully complex, and ultimately most-mature songwriting effort to date from a great contemporary band. |
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