The Frames - Cost (CD)

All Music Guide

If the Frames don't crack it with Cost then there is something terribly wrong. The Irish heroes, who often get picked ahead of U2 at being the best live band at home, see this, their seventh album in a little over a decade and their third issued on the Anti label, home to Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Neko Case, Joe Henry, Danny Cohen, Marianne Faithfull, Blackalicious and Daniel Lanois, among others. The label pedigree is no accident. Cost was recorded live in the studio in ten days. The idea was to capture some of the excitement and drama the band exude in truckloads during their live shows. With Steve Fitzmaurice and David Odlum at the helm, this is no garage rock date, but it drips with immediacy and emotion. Fronted by songwriter Glen Hansard, the quintet donned electric and acoustic guitars, simple keyboards, and drums augmented by strings and very subtle, atmospheric brass. In other words, the setting Black Box in France and extra musicians make this the Frames recording to beat and c...arries within it the possibility of pop greatness. This is indie pop developed to such a level that it has to be impossible to deny. Check the lilt and tension in "People Get Ready," (not the Curtis Mayfield song) where each individual is asked to evaluate her or his own life and prepare for something bigger than they are namely the chance to not be denied collectively. Hansard's voice is tender and tough, soft and large, and he gets to the meat of a lyric without having to exert his sincerity, unlike another frontman of a hugely popular Irish band. The strings and guitars swell and swoop, they ebb and flow together and make the entire track nearly lift off the ground. "Rise" has all the erotic tension of a great Tindersticks tune without any of the derisive or bitter irony not to mention Hansard's beautiful singing voice. Two tracks Hansard recorded with Czech actress, singer, composer and multiinstrumentalist Marketa Irglova, who he collaborated with on the unsunginthe U.S. CD Swell Season (and with whom he also costarred in the John Carney film Once) are rerecorded here: "Falling Slowly" (which may lose a bit of its erotic focus but gains in sheer accessibility), and "When Your Mind's Made Up." Read more Less