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 Yes, there are still a handful of boisterous tunes trying to share a house with their more withdrawn cousins.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.