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Last Post 8/25/2004 8:12 PM by  Gar
New Frames Album
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Gar
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8/25/2004 8:12 PM
    For those of you who are looking forward to the new Frames album, here is a quick inisght provided by Hotpress writer Stuart Clark. It’s been a four-year wait, but The Frames’ vast fanbase can lick their chops at the prospect of the band’s fifth studio album. hotpress.com has been taking a pre-release listen to The Frames’ eagerly awaited new album, Burn The Maps, which is due through Plateau on September 17. Arguably the most important record in their 15-year-career, the tracks stack up as follows: ‘Happy’ – “Come rescue me I’m sick”, Glen pleads, making a mockery of the title. At first his only accompaniment is a stark drumbeat, but this being The Frames, his pain is soon eased by Colm Mac An Iomaire’s celestial strings and his own multi-layered harmonies. ‘Finally’ – If middle-age is supposed to mellow you, no one’s told Glen who doesn’t so much raise as rip out hackles with his vocal. Add in a rhythm section (Paul Noonan is the guest sticksman) that’s pure ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’-era Joy Division and no wonder this is all over radio at the moment like a rash. ‘Dream Awake’ – Another slowburner which erupts when Mac An Iomaire puts bow to fiddle. ‘A Caution To The Birds’ – The whisky-sodden, five in the morning soundtrack to a breaking heart. ‘Tryin’’ –Two-and-a-half-minutes of Mary Chain-esque gorgeousness in which Glen, requiring salvation again, sends out a, “Lost my way/Come find me” SOS to his significant other. ‘Fake’ – Never afraid to wear their influences on their record sleeve, The Frames re-write the Pumpkins’ ‘Today’ with Top 5 conquering results. ‘Sideways Down’ – Tom Waits, Interpol, The Dirty Three and – most surprisingly – The Strokes all take their turn on the studio dansette as The Frames comprehensively nail this live favourite. And, yes, that is Lisa Hannigan on backing vocals. ‘Underglass’ – Scabrous feedback guitar, vein-bulging vocals …my God, it’s The Baggot circa 1991 all over again! ‘Ship Caught In The Bay’ – The emotional heat gets turned up again as Glen and Dave “Deasy” Cleary co-author the definitive lo-fi lullaby. ‘Keepsake’ – A jilted lover song which revels in its own brooding malevolence. Couplets like “I’m keeping this as a keepsake/And everything else I’m burning” suggest that the person who’s done the dumping should avoid dark alleyways for the foreseeable future. ‘Suffer In Silence’ – Despair turns to hope with Glen urging, “Come back, show your face/Can’t you see, you’re too good for this place/Can we leave?/It’s not your fault, what they say/Don’t believe.” Not to be outdone, Colm pitches in with another panoramic string arrangement. ‘Locusts’ – Joe Doyle shares microphone duties as Burn The Maps gets the soaring live to fight – and love! – another day climax it deserves. Stuart Clark  
    Gar
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    8/28/2004 10:21 AM
    Tickets are now on sale for Vicar Street gigs on 20th and 31st of Septemeber. The Frames have also been confirmed for the Sunday of the HWCH festival.
    Binokular
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    8/28/2004 11:24 AM
    quote:
    Originally posted by Gar
    ‘Finally’ – ....Add in a rhythm section that’s pure ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’-era Joy Division
    Sorry, but that quote just totally cracks me up. Joy Divisions total history only streches from late 1976 to the middle of 1980. How many "eras" can a band have in under 4 years?
    Gar
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    8/28/2004 8:19 PM
    Just for the record, those aren't my words.
    Binokular
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    8/31/2004 10:25 AM
    Never intended to imply they were Gar so sorry if it came across that way.
    Rev Jules
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    8/31/2004 11:16 AM
    quote:
    Originally posted by Gar
    Add in a rhythm section (Paul Noonan is the guest sticksman) that’s pure ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’-era Joy Division and no wonder this is all over radio at the moment like a rash.
    I take it by this that Stuart Clarke actually means that they whipped the drum and bass tracks off 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'. This in turn means that the song therefore reminds punters of that Carlsberg ad where the guy is queing for a beer at a sports match and, as a result, radio is happy to play it. Would that be an accurate summary ?
    Gar
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    8/31/2004 12:05 PM
    Have to hear The Frames song first to answer that. Looking forward to their new album and their set at HWCH gig. Got a bootleg cd of them playing in Holland earlier this year which is pretty good.
    Gar
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    9/1/2004 10:33 PM
    Another new album lined-up even before 'Burn The Maps' has been released. Days before the release of their fifth studio album Burn The Maps, The Frames reveal that album number six is "ready to rock". The Frames, who release their fifth studio album, Burn The Maps, in Ireland on September 17, are already hard at work on Maps’ follow-up, which may see the light of day as early as next year. The reason for such admirable workaholism is that Burn The Maps is the band’s first worldwide release, and promoting it is unlikely to leave the band much free time to record. The other reason is, as Frames manager Claire Leadbitter posted on the band’s website, "because there are soooo many new songs flying around at the moment". Frames frontman Glen Hansard tells Hot Press a little something about what fans can expect. "Our next record will be very much song-written," he says. "I can think of three songs off the top of my head that are very much in the tradition of proper, folky songs. "One of them is called ‘Song For Someone’. It’s a very simple little song: a real, proper folky number. "There’s ’People Get Ready’, which is simple too, but which kind of turns into a bit of a marauder at the end. It gets a bit (makes growly marauding noise) ‘Oooooaaahhh!'. "And I think ‘Races’ is going to go on it, as well, this other song, which is very, very plain. You know. A one-guy-and-his-girlfriend-and-a-guitar kind of song. "But you never know. You always go into an album going, ‘This’ll be what it is’. And it ends up being a completely different beast. But, yeah, as happy as we are with Burn The Maps, and as proud of it as we are, I’m already focused completely on our next record. "We’re in the studio in October," he continues. "We finish the Irish tour, and we go straight to France to Black Box Studios. Graham Hopkins is going to come over and drum on it. We’re gonna spend 10 days there. And I’m really hoping that we’ll come out of that with another finished record. As in, it’ll be recorded fast. And it’ll be put out fast. "The band are all already going, ‘Okay, which song? What version should we go for? What should we be trying to do with it? So we’ve an album pretty much ready to rock."
    Gar
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    9/13/2004 12:45 PM
    The Frames Burn the Maps (Plateau) For 14 years The Frames have conducted the business of their art like filmmakers who reached a détente with the studio system through operating on a one-for-us/one-for-them basis. The first and third albums were made with label consultation (if not meddling), the second and fourth were the spawn of autonomy. But the schism also applied to the music: you never knew which Frames might show up on your door: the Albini-fied white-noiseniks or the rustic quietists camping out in Linkous’s woods. This fifth studio album goes a long way towards resolving such radical mood swings – or rather, reconciling them within the confines of each song. Yes, there are still a handful of boisterous tunes trying to share a house with their more withdrawn cousins. In the former category, the splendid ‘Fake’, which could be Billy Corgan playing ‘Creep’ in the third person, and the Pixies-centric sandblastings of ‘Underglass’. In the latter, ‘A Caution To The Birds’ and ‘Keepsake’, with their churning undertows and random acts of violin-ce suggesting the apocalypticism of Godspeed and the Dirty Three. But when The Frames integrate their various personalities, something alchemical happens, and a lot of it has to do with Colm Mac Con Iomaire. Hear how the violinist lifts the coda of ‘Happy’ into the realm of the elegiac with a series of sharp stabs to the heart, or the way his strings ennoble the carefully orchestrated dynamic shifts and no-quarter-given vocal of ‘Finally’. And if you’re looking for an example of inspired ensemble playing, note how ‘Dream Awake’ begins as one of Glen Hansard’s patented a-word-in-your-ear confessionals before Joe Doyle and guest drummer Graham Hopkins railroad it with triple-time polyrhythms. At times Burn The Maps plays like a succession of Chinese boxes whose riddles only unfold after the fifth listen. ‘Sideways Down’ merges a warm melody with Martin Hannett motorik, conjuring seraphic boy sopranos out of avant-rock. The acoustic heart of ‘Trying’ gets a hole punched through it by great beaming shafts of guitar and Spector’s favourite rhythm equation (three on the floor, one on the tambourine). And true to its title, the percussion on ‘Ship Caught In The Bay’ clunks like a dory against the hull of a trawler after dark, glowing with an almost Eno-esque atmosphere before its stillness is ruptured by a loop straight out of Warp-space. Make no mistake, this not an overly friendly record (diehards might justly complain about the exclusion of crowd-pleasers such as ‘People Get Ready’ or ‘The Blood’), but it is stubbornly true unto itself, due in no small part to an insider production job courtesy of Dave Odlum and Rob Bochnik. So, Burn The Maps manages the considerable feat of nailing The Frames’ kinetic energies while simultaneously expanding their parameters. Here’s where it gets interesting. Peter Murphy (HOTPRESS) Rating: 8 / 10
    aidan
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    9/13/2004 2:21 PM
    wow! I thought my reviews were heavy going, but I didn't understand ANYTHING of that 'hot press' frames review!! excusez-MOI! as he would say himself, 'it clunks like a dory'. but at least the record is good...right?
    Binokular
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    9/13/2004 2:49 PM
    I agree about the review Aidan, any review that has readers reaching for the dictionary in the first sentence is usually a bad thing, but at least I know what "détente" means now
    Brain of G
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    9/13/2004 3:43 PM
    That has to be the funniest album review I've ever read! Who's Peter Murphy trying to impress?
    cheesy
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    9/13/2004 4:19 PM
    can no one these days just say that an album sounds good or not??? is he saying he likes it or not????? "The acoustic heart of ‘Trying’ gets a hole punched through it by great beaming shafts of guitar and Spector’s favourite rhythm equation" what the hell does that mean??? I think a review about peter's review is in order: " I find Peter's review a melancholic dissemenation of the Frames new piece of musical collaboration. He ambience laden words not only consort to the impresiion of imperialistic conformaty, but the socialistic capitalism is all to unevident in the foreboding of the McDonalds consortium. The review is like a squeaky well, and we all know what they say about them don't we?A squeky wheel gathers no moss worth two in the bush. I think that sums it up quiet nicely.
    spurtacus
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    9/13/2004 5:12 PM
    i have absolutely no interest in the frames whatsoever,but for all i could understand in that poxy review it might as well have been about brussel sprouts
    cheesy
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    9/13/2004 5:19 PM
    maybe it was...............maybe it was................interesting
    mutch
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    9/13/2004 5:38 PM
    so, was it a positive review, or...does he know himself!?
    Gar
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    9/13/2004 5:55 PM
    It was positive because he gave it 8/10 but otherwise its a bad review. Major music publications should employ younger and to the point journalists and send the baffling thesaurus pasted journos packing. If that does happen, make sure to throw my name in the hat
    Unicron
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    9/13/2004 7:32 PM
    quote:
    Originally posted by Brain of G
    That has to be the funniest album review I've ever read! Who's Peter Murphy trying to impress?
    I'd imagine that due to that annoying last vertibrae rendering the actual act itself impossible this is a literary attempt at self-fellatio. In other words, himself. Christ, I thought my writeup for day 1 of HWCH was shambolic (anyone know when Cluas's coverage of that is going up?) but this takes the cake.
    An Fear
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    9/14/2004 5:38 PM
    yes good point...i won a signed copy of the album last nite..so ill prob hav it tomoro....ill giv ye a proper review!! lol!!:-)
    Gar
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    9/21/2004 10:54 AM
    Is anyone doing a review of this album for Cluas? And is anyone going to be covering any of their Vicar Street gigs?
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