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The Frames Burn the Maps music review
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The Frames Burn the Maps
Anti
By taking the art out of Radiohead and replacing it with a wholesome
truth,
you’ll get a fraction of what The Frames represent themselves to be.
Settled
in nicely right next to this is Starsailor’s glorified somber tones;
tranquil yet aching.
Track listing:
01 Happy
02 Finally
03 Dream Awake
04 A Caution To The Birds
05 Trying
06 Fake
07 Sideways Down
08 Underglass
09 Ship Caught In The Bay
10 Keepsake
11 Suffer Is Silence
12 Locusts
Burn The Maps (Plateau Records, 2004) is an album with a generous
amount of
honesty and feelings stacked preserved over time only to be released
through
a very expressful voice.
‘Finally’ starts off with a fast and continuous up-down stroke to the
guitar, and approachable vocals by lead Glen Hansard, but by the time
the
chorus comes in, there are screaming emotions to shake your senses into
his
point of view. His urgency and need to get his thoughts across are all
to
clear: ‘You found something so good/It’s drawing trouble on your
life/And
when you lost something so good/It’s hard to focus on what’s right.’
The album poses as an equal divide between composed and concernable
anxiety,
but it’s put forth so articulately, that it’s hard to ignore.
Track five, ‘Trying’, is a short piece with only nine lines, but it’s
an
effortless poem about a rough, one-sided relationship. It’s somewhat
similar
to Coldplay’s title track, ‘Parachutes’, in the sense that the shorter
and
more direct, the more meaningful.
A hint of Rubyhorse shadows in ‘Fake’, with it’s illustrious guitars
and
slides. This is a beautiful song about a man’s view on his ex’s new
boyfriend, and there is just enough tone to show that he doesn’t want
to be
out of her life just yet. It’s all-too common of a scenario, but the
sheer
fact of it makes it a track to hold onto.
The Dublin, Ireland band is the most notable band to come out of the
area
lately other than their worldly predecessors, U2. The group, which has
been
around since 1990, has released seven albums to date, including Burn
The
Maps. As of late, the members are Hansard (vocals/guitar), Joseph Doyle
(bass/guitar), Colm Mac Con Lomaire (vocals/keyboards/violin), Rob
Bochnik
(lead guitar) as well as a variety of drummers throughout the recording
process.
The leisurely album prods along after a while, but there are times when
the
musical dominance in the tracks (’Keepsake’) play a more important part
than
Hansard’s words can provide. The guitars take on their own role, and
they
speak for themselves.
The album’s name was derived from ‘Keepsake’ about starting anew, with
Hansard saying, ‘(It’s) about setting fire to everything that you are.’
15 years and still going strong, The Frames are not about to burn out
yet.
