I know it’s bad form these days to bring up partition in polite company, but when reviewing a new album by The Frames, there really is no alternative.
Ireland, after all, is divided between those who turn each of their gigs into quasi-religious happenings, and those who, should they find the band playing at the bottom of their garden, would gladly pull the curtains shut.
Believers view Hansard & Co’s brew of emotive folk-tinged rock as a shining example of durability and authenticity in image-obsessed days. Atheists see it as the grim apotheosis of the strain of phoney singer-songwriting that was especially virulent in Dublin at the latter part of the last decade. Agnostics remain largely unmoved.
The Cost, it has to be said, is not a record that will inspire many cross-camp defections.
Those who've followed the band along the route they’ve taken, from Dance The Devil, through For The Birds and up to Burn The Maps, will find much here to wave lighters and sing-along to at the gigs. The swoonsome opener ‘Song For Someone’ establishes a template of string-driven balladry that ‘People Get Ready’, ‘The Side You Never Get To See’ and ‘Sad Songs’ take up with gusto.
Carrying war-wounds from many different campaigns, you might expect that by now the band’s desire to keep on tilting at the great crossover windmill would have waned somewhat. But, judging by ‘Falling Slowly’, the last-minute skin-saving service that ‘Run’ provided for Snow Patrol may have encouraged them to go over the top once more. The logic is that it could be huge.
The unconvinced will no doubt be surprised to find hints (‘The Cost’ and ‘Bad Bone’) of a band attempting to marry harmony with dissonance in a way that could almost see them taking on the mantle of a Celtic Wilco (indeed a previous working relationship with Steve Albini would suggest a sturdier creative instinct than detractors credit The Frames with). Unfortunately, though, with a default setting of bombast, this intriguing prospect is only partially exploited.
It’s clear that The Frames inhabit a place in Irish affections similar to the one Paul Weller enjoys in England – review-proof, cocooned by a fanatically loyal fanbase from wider criticism, and locked into a familiar musical space that they seem content to maintain rather than renovate.
Fair enough: they have found their metier. But the suspicion lingers that were they to find a way of preaching to the unconverted, the rewards would be much greater.