The Frames
Burn The Maps
»
The Frames
Burn The Maps
Anti-, 2005
RiYL: Radiohead, Damien Rice, Slint |
After ‘03’s fine live album Set List, things began to change. A tour with relative tyke Damien Rice didn’t hurt none, either. Hansard’s grim musings and deep, deep voice (the band often covers Johnny Cash’s “Ring Of Fire” on stage) was countered well by Colm MacConlomaire’s exultant violin playing. A catalog of great songs piled up while no one was listening, and playing in front of a partisan Dublin crowd raised the level of the performances quite above their studio renditions. With the always-cyclical American level of interest in folk-rock waxing, Hansard could have led the band back into the studio with their new mid-major deal and punched out Set List 2: The Same Thing, Except Not Live. They’ve done no such thing.
Not being natives, the Frames had no way of knowing that you can’t be slowcore and post-rock, electronica-influenced and acoustic-based. Burn The Maps is a Radiohead record in reverse; the feelings come first and the laptops later. Johnny Boyle’s always surprising drumming has a profound effect on the way Hansard’s often simple progressions proceed. MacConlomaire and bassist Joseph Doyle provide sweet, true harmonies. Okay, it is true that “Ship Caught In The Bay” shuffles into sequencer city halfway through, but for the most part this record is neither over- nor underproduced. It’s just produced, which is a new thing for a band that has often recorded in rural Irish cottages.
The songs are up to the occasion, particularly “Happy,” with Boyle’s jarring off-beat snare snaps, and “Keepsake,” which may telegraph its intentions but is no less compelling for recycling the old soft-soft-soft-LOUD formula. “Locusts” is as lovely as a Nick Drake ballad with much less bleak lyrics. “I’m willing to be wrong,” Hansard sings over well-placed harmonies. “Finally” is a rocker in the vein of the band’s earlier successes such as “Revelate” from Fitzcarraldo or “Pavement Tune” from Dance The Devil. The Frames play it closer to the vest here, however, and the marching drum work leads Hansard’s emotions to implode rather than explode.
Burn The Maps’ weaknesses come in the middle, where a few upbeat tracks fail to competely make up for “Sideways Down,” which is a less effective “Happy,” and “Ship,” which isn’t interesting in its slowcore or its breakbeat section. As an album, though, it’s a qualified success, and easily surpasses anything the Frames have done in the studio before. Set List has the benefit of picking the best cuts from three prior albums (and that enthusiastic crowd); it would be a better place to start getting into this excellent band. However, it serves as a summation of the first decade of Frames music. Burn The Maps is unequivocably the future.
MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.