The Frames
May 30th
Posts: 1,753
What album should i start with? Thanks for any info.
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I'd go
Setlist-the frames live album, all their hits and a perfect snapshot of what they do. Compiled of the songs from the albums mentioned below, it's a killer live record.
For the Birds-their masterpiece. It's kinda quiet but some of its songs are on Setlist and you can see how the songs evolve and come alive during their gigs.
Dance the Devil- great song after great song, again, some of these songs are on Setlist and it's an all round top shelf record.
Fitzcarraldo-'the hits' worth owning just 'cos Revelate and Fitzcarraldo are on there(the frames 'national anthems') pretty great record too, even though it's 15 years old!
it's beyond exciting that the two of them are doing this together..Glen's a powerful, powerful performer and has a real gift of getting audiences on his side and he plays really great music into the bargain. it's a 20 year old dream come true for me to see them together and if Sleepless nights is anything to go by, I can only hope they record together again in future.
Discover them now and you'll be wondering where they've been all your life
If you're gonna just youtube them, look up any of these
Revelate
Fitzcarraldo
God Bless Mom
Seven day mile
Perfect Opening line
Rent day blues
Pavement tune
Stars are underground
What happens when the heart just stops
Lay me down
I'll put together a list of the songs you're likely to hear Glen play solo later..an impossible mission 'cos it could almost be anything..
I've seen Glen play impromptu solo sets, guest appearances etc over the years in his various projects, and he reminds me of Ed in one way - he always plays LOTS of covers, usually including an Irish trad cover, but ranging from Pixies, Nirvana, to Van Morrison, The Chieftans, Daniel Johnston, Britney Spears & Justin Timberlake. He'll probably vary his sets up quite a bit.
Just in the past month he's played the White House for Paddys Day, done 4 reunion concerts with The Commitments in Ireland, and done club shows with frames& commitments members, Liam OMaonlaoi, Natalie Merchant, and Damien Rice. next week he has a Frames show for the anniversary of "For The Birds". Busy guy.
He loves to cover this song, it's called Hey Day and was written by a friend of his and talented Irish musician called Mic Christopher who passed away a few years back. It's a bit of an anthem in Ireland.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcnPWUxM_Sk
can't wait for this For The Birds birthday gig...AND the original line up that recorded it are doing it
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/fea ... 7dc338%2C0
Same Frames, different world
Evolving Frames: the band soon after Dave Odlum's departure in 2002 (top, left to right: Joe Doyle, Glen Hansard, Dave Hingerty, Colm Mac Con Iomaire) and on stage at Vicar Street last year.Photograph: Eric Luke
Building more than just a boat
JIM CARROLL
The moment The Frames took creative control of their career was strictly ‘For the Birds’. Ahead of a 10th anniversary concert in Dublin, Colm Mac Con Iomaire and Dave Odlum recall the making of a landmark album
A DECADE AGO The Frames released For the Birds and turned a corner. For years, as frontman Glen Hansard has often quipped, they were a band destined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
He had a point. During the 1990s record deals with Island and ZTT had left the band battered and bruised. While they had released three albums and built a loyal Irish fan base, the experience of having someone else guiding their career was not a happy one.
For the Birds changed that. Musically, it was a delight, the album where the band became comfortable in their own skins for the first time. It still sounds fresh, exciting and invigorating, a document of a band rediscovering their love of playing. But For the Birds also proved that The Frames didn’t have to rely on others: they could record, produce and release the record themselves.
Later this month the band will mark the 10th anniversary of the album by playing it in full at a show in Dublin’s Vicar Street.
“The abiding memory I have of For the Birds is of excitement and freedom,” says Colm Mac Con Iomaire, the fiddle-player who has been a Frame since day one. “Finally, we were steering our own ship and in control of things, financially and creatively. We could pick who we wanted to work with and we owned a recording system, which made a huge difference because we had the flexibility to go down to Kerry to record in a house there. Digital music was in its infancy and it was quite novel to have these digital files to send around the place.”
Back then Dave Odlum was the band’s guitarist. “One memory is that the record was as much made over cups of tea as in the studio,” he says. “We discussed a lot about what we wanted it to be. We knew there was a lot of goodwill out there for us, and that encouraged us to carry on. When we made our first album it was a bunch of young fellows being heavily steered by a record label because we didn’t know who we were. The second album was where we decided to make a record for ourselves, and we found our feet a lot. On the third album it was back into record-label land.
“We knew after that that we wanted to make an album just for the sake of making music. We had no intentions or plans, and that’s what made For the Birds exciting.”
Mac Con Iomaire says some of the heavy lifting for For the Birds was done on the band’s previous album. “We conjured up the independent model when we recorded Dance the Devil . We paid for the recording and release of Revelate and were going full steam for that path and then made a huge slip-up by signing to ZTT.
“While we were definitely heading in the right direction with Dance the Devil , there was a level of compromise with the production. The record wasn’t a true representation of what we wanted to put out, so by the time For the Birds came around, we were chomping at the bit.” Mac Con Iomaire hadn’t listened to the album in a few years but, “I listened to it earlier today and it brought me back. It’s the record everybody cites as their favourite Frames record. You can resist that but, after 10 years, you kind of go: ‘Well, it was my favourite record of ours as well!’
“It strikes me as a female record, a yin rather than a yang record, a record which is much more at peace with itself. We were rejecting the Trevor Horn school of reverbs and polished sound.”
For Odlum, For the Birds was his chance to do more production work. “I’d done some with Dance the Devil and loved it. We started out working on that album with some people, but we had to finish it on our own and, literally, the nuts and bolts fell down to me, which was quite a baptism of fire.
“I got taken under the wing of the people at Black Box Studios. They taught me how to become a proper engineer as opposed to a guy who thinks he’s a record producer because he has a laptop, a sound card and a microphone.”
For the Birds was recorded in various houses in Ireland, the Black Box studio in France (which Odlum now co-owns and runs) and, in what turned to be a fortuitous choice, Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio studio in Chicago.
“We made all these connections in Chicago,” says Mac Con Iomaire. “Through Steve Albini we met Howard Greynolds and he put out For the Birds on his Overcoat label, which is part of Touch and Go. We met Rob , who was working as an engineer at the studio, and he later became our guitarist. There were a huge amount of alignments and happy coincidences.”
Back in 2000, notes Odlum, very few acts were in DIY mode. “At the time, and this shows you how much has changed, it wasn’t common for people to go off and make records on their own. That probably engendered even more goodwill from people towards us.
“Back then, bands would walk into a recording studio and go, ‘God, it looks like a spaceship in here, do we really know what we’re doing here?’ It’s so much more commonplace now for musicians to know how to use recording equipment, but back then bands felt they needed engineers and producers because they didn’t have that knowledge. It’s very liberating for a band to go from relying on highly paid engineers and producers to actually doing it themselves.”
For the Birds opened up a new career for Odlum. “Afterwards a lot of people were interested in me working with them on records,” he says. “Because the album did so well the band were becoming busier, so it became difficult for me to juggle what were two full-time careers. I left the band a few years later to concentrate on studio work.”
He will, though, be back in the band again for the forthcoming Dublin show, the plan for which was hatched last year.
“Glen had his 40th birthday party and as part of that, The Frames decided to play a gig,” says Mac Con Iomaire. “It was during the whole ash-clouds thing and Rob couldn’t make it from Chicago and Dave couldn’t get back to France and Dave Hingerty was around, so it worked out that all the original cast of For the Birds were in town.
“It was just a great vibe and it was lovely to revisit the album and be in everyone’s company again, so it made sense to do it again.”
The Frames play For the Birds at Dublin’s Vicar Street on Wednesday, March 30th
It's a funny old album, I dont listen to it as much as Fitzcarraldo or Dance...but I think it's their most consistent album from start to finish by a longshot. Fitzcarraldo & Dance both have 6 or son INCREDIBLE songs with some very average songs rounding them off....But there arent any bad songs on Birds.
(I probably listen to FC and DTD more cos they were the big albums out when i got into them around 2001 - on old pirate phantom FM no doubt)
This whole thing has put me on a bit of a Frames buzz now, I just pulled out my Breadcrumb Trail CD - things are getting serious....
nobody does it quite like them
Must admit there are some stunning moments on Breadcrumb Trail...yes indeedy...Itunes here i come...
Picked up "for the birds" now. Looking forward to hearing that.
Lisbon '06 (x2)
Katowice '07
London '07 '09 (x2), '10
MSG NY '08 (x2)
Manchester '09 '12
Belfast '10
PJ20 Alpine '11 (x2)
Leeds '14
I agree I can't stop listening! I've been sitting at my computer for 3 hours now obsessively searching YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y4-n85lpCk
Lisbon '06 (x2)
Katowice '07
London '07 '09 (x2), '10
MSG NY '08 (x2)
Manchester '09 '12
Belfast '10
PJ20 Alpine '11 (x2)
Leeds '14
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh34ecxHWQM
Great to see them get some new folks on board at last
We're also PJ fans from way back ('Heavy into Jeff' was our favorite issue of the Footsteps zine) so we're super stoked about this tour as well!
Shannon + Jenn
heartily recommend a visit or ten.
great work by the way, ladies
...........Great site, Thanks!!!
The Frames (Official)
We are planning to bring tomorrow’s special 'For The Birds' 10th anniversary concert to you live from Vicar St via our website. Full details will be posted on http://www.theframes.ie/ tomorrow afternoon so hopefully you can join us on the night...
love the frames, love that eddie and glen are touring together, love the orderinthesound website, and love the tolkien geek reference you got goin on there eldarion75.
here's a review that pretty much nails it..I'm sure a recording will show up somewhere..I'll post a link when i find it.
A gig of two halves: The Frames and “For the Birds”
JIM CARROLL
If The Frames have a spiritual home, it’s probably Dublin’s Vicar Street. While there are other capital city venues which could also lay claim to the band’s spirit – some would say the band and Whelan’s were always a perfect match – and there are other venues worldwide which have seen a string of great shows from the band, the Thomas Street hall has been there the band have always stretched themselves to the limits. During the last decade, it was the place where the band played some astonishing shows as they became the band they always were capable of becoming. On that stage over the years, the scrappy, ramshackle street warriors turned into craftsmen.
Thus the Frames playing “For the Birds” in full at Vicar Street last night was always going to be a red letter day for many who believe that the band’s fourth album, released in 2001, remains the pinnacle of their career. Nothing the band had done before that album had resounded with such beautiful, subtle, exciting grace. And, indeed, while they were hugely successful afterwards (especially with Glen Hansard’s ongoing Swell Season affair), “For the Birds” still occupies the throne in their back-catalogue. It is, as violinist Colm Mac Con Iomaire says in this recent piece about the album’s 10th anniversary, one of the band’s favourite albums too.
It was a sublime performance, every track taking you back a decade to when that album was first released and the growing realisation that Hansard and friends had become a very serious concern as a band. A friend of mine has a theory that most Irish music fans go through an 18 month period of infatuation with The Frames and mine was certainly around “For the Birds”. While I’d known the band from the early days, I hadn’t really paid much attention to them between their first and fourth albums. I remember seeing them for the first time in years in early 2001 at the tribute show in the Olympia for the late, great Uaneen Fitzsimons and being totally blown away by how much had changed during their first decade as a band. When “For the Birds” came out, I was ready to be hugely smitten.
Last night’s performance, though, wasn’t just about nostalgia. Sure, shivers ran up and down spines as “In the Deep Shade” began its slow, shy, tender entrance and you remembered how many times it had cast its spell on you. But the musicians hadn’t turned into their younger selves for the evening. They were approaching last night’s show with the experience and steel of a band who’ve been through some huge occasions in the last 10 years. This was about looking back alright, but looking back with hindsight on how “For the Birds” saw them turn a corner and pushed them down a new road on which they’re still trucking.
As they freshly unpicked every track, there were both familiar and unfamiliar discoveries in tracks like “Headlong” and “Fighting On the Stairs”. Both “Santa Maria” and “Disappointed” were mighty in scope and execution, while “Early Bird” still signposts how the band had worked out a new way of going forward. What made the gig all the more special was the superb playing throughout, especially from Colm Mac Con Iomaire and the re-Framed Dave Odlum. Here was a band responding to the occasion by playing out of their skins. They were majestic, magisterial and stately, a Wilco-esque performance in this room which has seen many great performances from this bunch of musicians.
Really, the night could have been – and should have been – left at that and we’d all have gone home happy. But there was more to come.
The second half of the show began with great promise with Roddy Doyle reading his very funny short story “Blood” and the band working their way through golden age classics like “God Bless Mom” and “Revelate”. Inevitably, more guests started arriving. Damien Rice rambled onstage looking for all the world like a man who’d gone out to the shops to buy an organic turnip and ended up at Vicar Street. Mercifully, he played just one song and wandered off again. Bronagh Gallagher and guitarist Conor Brady turned The Frames into a southern soul ensemble for a tune, which was sweet and definitely worthy of more time. Support act Interference came on for a song which reminded you once again that Fergus O’Farrell’s voice is one of our musical nation’s most unheralded assets. And then, Liam O’Maonlai arrived. I think O’Maonlai deserves a paragraph of his own.
For some reason, the unbilled O’Maonlai took over proceedings as if he was the main attraction. While the other guests had realised the audience had come to see a band and quickly vacated the stage after one song, O’Maonlai didn’t have the sense, gumption or grace to recognise this state of affairs. Instead, this inveterate attention-seeker rambled for over 20 minutes through three songs. It was a car crash performance, one you really didn’t want to watch, but you didn’t dare avert your eyes for fear of missing what the man on the stage with the red underpants (clearly to be seen, unfortunately) was going to do next.
On and on O’Maonlai went, whooping, hollering and dancing like Pappy O’Daniel in O Brother, Where Art Thou? as he kept that painful south county Dublin bogman schtick going for as long as he could get away with it. He led a self-indulgent version of “Seeline Woman” which could still be going on were it not for some of the musicians onstage deciding it was time to draw the charade to a close. It was one of the most excruciating, embarrasing, foolish and unintentionally hillarious things I’ve ever seen in all my years going to gigs. It also drew shouts of “fuck off Liam” and “piss off” from an audience who weren’t quite sure whether to laugh or cry.
The show closed with “Heyday” and a reminder that one guest was sadly absent. But, in truth, the gig had lost its sizzle some time before that due to O’Maonlai’s antics. The first half was sublime, the second half (thanks to that Hothouse Flower) was verging on the ridiculous. Truly, a gig of two halves.
For The Birds 10th Anniversary Gig recording
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=O6NULL71
In the Deep Shade
Lay Me Down
What Happen When the Heart Just Stops - Caravan
Headlong
Fighting on the Stairs – Autobahn
Giving Me Wings
Early Bird
Friends and Foe
Santa Maria
Disappointed
Mighty Sword
Roddy – Blood
Your Face
God Bless Mom
Stars are Underground
Revelate
The Cost.
Wild and Free (by Damien Rice solo)
Do Right Woman, Do Right Man (with Bronagh Gallagher)
Gold (with Interference)
An Raibh Tú ar an gCarraig (with Liam O’Maonlai and Interference)
See Line Woman - Baby Please Don’t Go (with Liam and Interference)
Gaelic Song (with Liam and Interference)
Forever Young with Liam O’Maonlai)
Heyday