The Wrath Of Blog

Monday, September 25, 2006

Counting the Cost

So, predictably, Friday found me queueing in HMV with 20 euros clutched in one sweaty hand - and a copy of the Cost being lovingly caressed in the other. This is my 4th Frames related purchase in as many weeks - with the release of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irlgova's downbeat collaboration "The Swell Season", the Frames' own "Falling Slowly" single (precursor to the album), and a pair of tickets to see the band play live in Vicar St. next Sunday. My contributions to Glen Hansard's PRSA continue apace. But am I getting value for my money?

With a relatively short gap between this and Burn The Maps (2004), there is a case to be made that they are almost sister albums - especially considering the age of some of the songs on this record. Glen is quoted as saying that some of the songs written around the Burn The Maps sessions didn't quite fit the mood of the album, and were saved for a future album. Given that the mood of Burn The Maps was unremittingly and claustrophbically dark, I guess I assumed that The Cost would be a "happy" Frames album.

How wrong I was.

1. Song For Someone

Hey! 1.5 seconds into this album and we get our first Radiohead reference. After "drying up in conversation", Glen employs his cranky voice (last heard on Happy, the opening track on BTM) to make anguished appeals to the titular someone he was born to be with. Predictably, this is somone who has already dumped him and shagged off. Actually, this songs compares musically to Happy as well. It's stuck in the same manic depressive tempo, with a dry snare beat playing off some lazy spacey electric guitar. The prechorus is catchy enough, with Glen wrapping his vowels with a blues inflection and the drumbeat beginning to dig in - but he loses it completely on the chorus - stretching the vowels almost into a parody of himself - the echo turned way up to give an epic feel to the whole thing and the violin wailing away in the background. The breakdown harkens back to some of the minor key songs on Fitzcarraldo, before building up into a full band coda, with Glen muttering his way through some muted declarations of passion for...well, someone.

All in all, I'm not impressed. It's not bad enough to condemn the album, but there's a sense that they're just not really trying very hard. This is a small song that cheated its way to epic. It must be annoying to get compared to your back catalogue as much as the Frames do, but this just doesn't have the innocent charm of Your Face or Star Star, nor does it have the epic passion that drives Red Chord or Angel At My Table. It certainly doesn't invite singalongs like previous material. Maybe the Frames don't want to be that kind of band any more, but that doesn't mean they have to throw melody or charm out the window. It sounds lumpen.

2. Falling Slowly

Next up, we have the first single released from the album, Fake. Wait. Wtf? The opening of Falling Slowly lifts an entire section from the closing of Fake - complete with Glen's falsetto. Didn't anyone tell him that he'd already had this idea?

Anyway, this is one of the songs on the album that has appeared in another form, being one of the stronger pieces on the Swell Sweason. Its previous incarnation was marked by sweetly impassioned boy/girl vocals and a soaring chorus. Here it's considerably beefier, with the dynamics heightened by stealing the "Fake" formula. It's cheap, but effective. I didn't really like the single because it seemed overly dramatic, but like Fake, it sits better in an album context. The tempo is still fairly low, but the song surges naturally towards the chorus, helped along by excellent bass work from Joe Doyle (who carries quite a few of the songs on this album). The whole thing gets drenched in melody at the end by the string section, and it works.

All that said, I preferred it on the Swell Season, where the nautical metaphors worked better and the (really rather excellent) lyrics formed part of a larger picture. Anyway, onwards and upwards...

3. People Get Ready

Because if they'd left it off of yet another album, there'd likely have been lynchings. This song has been out and about in Frames-land for years. There are literally dozens of live bootlegs floating around the internet of varying quality. With its "Belfast Child" drumming and old-school Frames-style uplifting chorus, this was the song that confirmed Frames fans in their belief that Glen Hansard was Jesus/Allah/Bono all rolled into one. The knowledge that it was written and arranged, and not released is the sort of thing that makes you fear for the quality of the Frames' decision making apparatus. It seems possible (to me at any rate) that Glen realised that Burn the Maps simply didn't deserve this song. Maybe he didn't know how he was going to do it justice in the studio. It reminds me of Clint Eastwood sitting on the script of "Unforgiven" for 20 years, waiting until he was old enough to play the part of William Munny, and skilled enough to direct it. Every so often, taking it out and reading it, "like a gold watch that I'd take out and look at, then drop back into my pocket - happy in the knowledge that I had something truly beautiful in my keeping."

Well, here it is. It begins just like it does in all those bootlegs, with a bright insistent strum and gentle vocals from Glen. The key to this song is the slow rumbling build. It's pretty hard to fuck it up, but they make a bizarre attempt to do so with a Velvet Underground/Deus style violin scratch loop that prickles through the early build. Luckily, once the song hits its stride (all credit to Joe Doyle's bass again) it's less noticeable.

The climax, when it finally comes, is done perfectly. The band are firing on all cylinders, forcing nothing and surfing on the fine line between melody and dissonance. The thunderously distorted "God-stamps-his-feet" drums manage to kick the whole thing up a notch without making it unbearably heavy (last time I heard drumming like this was on a Sepultura album). Whereas previously, the band would lose focus in their noisier moments and drag things on for a few bars too long (Santa Maria, I'm looking at you), here they stay with the song and the instruments fight with each other under carefully controlled rhythmic conditions. Rob Bochnik's guitar wins and his broken distortion-pedal trails feedback into a Mogwai-style post-climactic breakdown. Very much a win. Can't wait to have my rib-cage interfered with by this song at the gig. Things are beginning to look up.

4. Rise

Wow. I wasn't expecting this. This song has been around even longer than People Get Ready. I vaguely remember hearing this as far back as 1999, so it may even predate the Dance The Devil sessions. Normally performed by Glen solo, it has features his trademark head-snapping switch from brooding menace to outright violence. It's one of those songs where you feel slightly disappointed if he hasn't broken at least 2 or 3 guitar strings in the performance. Like "Trying" from the last album it previously featured as the b-side to a single - produced by Steve Albini. Surprisingly, the Albini version managed to drain it of some its savagery - proving that the Frames are one of the world's most inept or unlucky bands in a studio setting. Again, it's a simple song. A moodily subtle folk strum hijacked about halfway through by a lunatic old testament preacher. How hard can it be?

Well, this time round we get a jazzy (!) piano lick curled around another lazy bass-line with jazzy (!!) brushed dumming and another guitar line lifted from the Fitzcarraldo playbook. Blasphemy! But...it works. Whereas the band squashed the life out of Song For Someone, this time they really add depth. The violin does its faraway ship in the fog thing through the second verse, and when the song breaks, unleashes a dramatic gypsy riff to let the instruments beneath gather volume. The violin then leads a headlong charge through the scales (reminds me a little of Radiohead's Just, or the summit of Fitzcarraldo) while the drummer struggles to catch the frantic pace.

Meanwhile, Glen finally throws his head back and does his time honoured Moses on the mountain thing. And does it very well. Another win. And proof that Glen occasionally needs the band. Hey, this is a pretty good album. I'll just try to ignore the fact that so far all the good songs are old ones.

5. When Your Mind's Made Up

Another refugee from the Swell Season album. With 2 songs on a 10 song album lifted straight from another 10 song album that was released only a few months ago, I'm tempted to accuse Glen of being a bit miserly with his talent. But hey, you don't question ginger deities.

The opening of this song is relatively unchanged from the Swell Season, with a little extra electric fuzziness on the guitar line (which is now noticeably similar to God Bless Mom's arpeggiated lines). This time round, we get some muscular drumming and bass-work, to go with the piano line that seems unchanged. As with most of the songs on Swell Season, it's part of a trawl through the wreckage of a broken relationship. Mood-wise, it's not a million miles from Sideways Down. I guess if I hadn't been previously exposed to the song, I'd be surprised by the prominence of the piano in the chorus. The Eastern-European inflected climax of the original (gypsy violins and whatnot) gets translated into dissonant Pixies style guitar abuse, courtesy of Rob Bochnik. Nice, but just as we're heading for a gleefully psychotic finish, someone uses protools to just drop the song straight into a gentle coda. Wtf? First of all, they've been doing this coda finish thing waaaaaay too often lately. On Burn The Maps; Dream Awake, Sideways Down, Fake, and Keepsake all had versions of this technique. God Bless Mom does it too (live, at least). So do What Happens, Friends And Foe and Headlong. It's all over the Swell Season. So far on this album, People Get Ready and Falling Slowly have done it. There's nothing wrong with it, but it can get a bit predictable. Secondly, with a band this experienced at handling song dynamics, why would you screw with them in the studio? It makes it all sound so...artificial.

Still, it's a pretty good song, and it keeps the band's needle (just barely) in the "worth worshipping" category. Mind you, troublesome times may be ahead with the album's second "new" song coming up...

6. Sad Songs

Or, to give it the full chorus: "Too many sad words make for sad, sad songs." Well, it's good that Glen is self aware. While it isn't quite as black as Burn The Maps, this album deals once again in shades of loss, regret, misdirected passion and all that familiar stuff. Thom Yorke once pointed out that writing harrowingly sad songs was easy, but writing genuinely happy songs requires enormous talent. It's easy to laugh at screamo bands like Linkin Park mining the Nirvana "I hate myself and want to die" seam for all the money that they can get from mildly unhappy teenagers - but at least they're reasonably honest about it. It's easy (for me, at least) to laugh too at the sad-sack me-too mopings of Colplay and Snow Patrol and a million other professional indie depressives - who try to wring every last inch of pathetic melancholy from their (presumably miserable) love-lives for mass market consumption ("I hate myself and I want to cry"). At least the Frames had higher lyrical ambitions - religion, mortality, family, etc. But, on Burn The Maps and this album, things have taken a far more love-lorn, introspective turn. Now, I'm all for Glen rummaging around in his love life for material - it's where we got Angel At My Table and Monument, but it's also where we got Your Face, Star Star and Headlong - which are, on balance, relatively happy songs. Nowadays, it seems, the Frames are venturing into "I hate myself and I want a string section" territory. Not good.

But anyway, this song starts well. The rhythym section is lifted straight from the Stills' Lola (a great song by the way, if you're gonna steal, steal well). Plus, we get this cool alt-country lead from Rob Bochnik. Glen is in a gloomy mood, moaning:
"there's no escape, but there's nothing I want more."
...but he does it well. The phrasing is catchy - and it's one of those songs that linger in your head for ages afterwards. And, for some reason, I'm reminded - in a weirdly good way - of Bon Jovi. I don't know why. Probably because Glen is trying to channel Springsteen and, well, so is Jon Bon Jovi to a certain extent. Actually, listening to it now, Glen actually refers to "Born To Run" in the lyrics. So maybe I'm not imagining this.

Anyway, this sounds like a track from Springsteen's "the Rising". Not tremendously original, but quality songwriting nonetheless. I'll even forgive the cliched coda thing that pops up on this song too. Onwards! Into the second half of the album...

7. The Cost

Oh dear.

After offering his apology for too many sad songs, Glen drags us straight back into misery and pain. With three distorted minor chords (reminiscent of Fitzcarraldo's In This Boat Together and Giving It All Away) welded to the funeral pace of A Caution To The Birds, Glen wheels out his cranky voice again, and it's clear what's on his mind:
"Love has been the cause of all this suffering..."

There's not a lot to say about this song. It surges in the middle, with a lukewarm retread of the glorious finale to Caution. There's no chorus to speak of, and it's all done in minor keys. It reminds me, for no particularly good reason, of Smashing Pumpkins' Heavy Metal Machine. Lots of pointless misery and whining - with no real hook or melody.

Eminiently forgettable.

8. True

Well, it starts promisingly enough...with a delicate arpeggiated guitar line (which I can't help noticing is a lot like Arcade Fire's In the Back Seat). But then the patented Radiohead hovering noise thing (see Sulk, and Bulletproof) heralds Glen, who is still massively cranky and is still finding more minor chords to strum:
"I find it so hard to be true/and all the secrets I keep from you/are like a blackness in my heart/that tears us both apart"

Jesus. Alanis Morisette writes better confessional lyrics than this. Maybe it's cathartic, but could he not have just sent this chick a tape and spared the rest of us?

The band is left in the background initially while Glen bares his all, putting the lyrics painfully front and center. Then a shaft of light with some Mellon Collie piano chords leading us to the chorus - and the band steps up to try and rescue the song - undermined by Glen's refusal to cheer up and introduce an actual melody. For the second chorus they try harder and enlist a string section - all in vain.

Finally, someone gives Glen a kick and he launches into a massively annoying Bono-style With or Without You wordless cry that finally tips me over into outright laughter. This song wasn't even half finished when it was recorded, and should have been left to rot in b-side obscurity. What the hell is it doing on a Frames album?

9. The Side You Never Get To See

Oh Christ. He's still cranky. At least this time we get a tempo. But we're still noodling about with Fitzcarraldo b-side minor chords. This song has a Deus feel to it, but Glen is still misreading the tone of his own lyrics, and he's still exploring the annoying register of his voice he found with Happy and Dream Awake.

The band do their best to make up for Glen's baffling descent into mediocrity by laying on the strings and the dramatic guitar. But just as they're pulling the whole thing back from the brink...Glen administers a final kick in the balls and delivers another "hey, let's repeat the chorus" coda before taking off on another "hey, let's sing along with the violin" wordless Mariah Carey impression. Since Glen is otherwise occupied and the song is pretty much fucked anyway, the band wander off into Bing Crosby musical territory. Another half finished song, and almost complete muck.

I'm beginning to see why this album was frontloaded with old songs. Glen has clearly mislaid his talent.

10. Bad Bone

Well. This song carries quite a weight. As the last song on a Frames album, it's up against standout tracks like Dance The Devil, Your Face, Mighty Sword and Locusts. Moreover, while those songs capped brilliant albums, Bad Bone has to rescue an album that has just seen the longest unbroken run of Hansardian excess and mediocrity in recorded history.

It's a big ask, and it's not tremendously surprising that Bad Bone doesn't manage it.

Which is not to say that it's a bad song. It strongly echos the pleasantly laid back "Neath the Beeches" from Dance the Devil. This is the kinda stuff Glen can knock out in his sleep. Again it's done at a funeral tempo, and again Glen is in full-on miserable confessional mode. But it has enough of the doomed romanticism of Red Chord in its DNA to make its case. Oh, and this time, he thought to write a melody. Which helps.

Admittedly, at the end, the band pulls out the same box of tricks they've used on almost every song on this album - but it sounds relatively natural here.

...and that's it. 44 minutes of new Frames material. I have to say, for the first half an hour, the album is pretty good. Not great, but pretty good. Taken with the unbelievably disappointing finish, it's just barely scraping a "good". It's a worrying sign. I was hoping that after the introspection of Burn The Maps, Hansard's songwriting would again turn outward - but it's still introspective, and it's taken huge nosedive in quality. The worst thing is...it's boring. The album just doesn't contain any real surprises, either musically or lyrically. There's no sense that the band is taking any risks, like they did on Dance The Devil or For The Birds. In one sense, it's what some fans have been asking for...a return to Fitzcarraldo style epics, with big climaxes and sweeping strings - with dissonant, minor key dirges thrown in along the way. But this album just doesn't have the charm that the earlier album had, despite the presence of big-hitters like People Get Ready and Rise.

Obviously, like all of the Frames faithful - I'm still going to go see them, and I have no doubt that the weaker songs will develop further in a live setting (or be quietly forgotten, like large sections of Burn the Maps). But it's frustrating to see talent like this go to waste. The Swell Season shows that Glen is still capable of writing great songs, and the band is still capable of amplifying his reach and pouring magic into the cracks in the songs. But they've gotten dangerously complacent with their skills.

All that said, they earned their right to my money long ago, and I'll probably continue contributing to Glen's PRSA until he cashes it in. And I'll keep my fingers crossed for the next album. After all, they still haven't recorded "Feeling The Pull"...

Monday, September 11, 2006

MLP: Nerd Porn

First, we have some hot japanese incredible machine action, and then, for the real hardcore, 1 hour and 14 minutes of original 1968 vintage black and white, uncensored, full frontal, multi camera angle Doug Engelbart Demo.