Customer Reviews

Burn the Maps

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Frames have long been the best kept secret of Ireland, but all that is about to change with this record and the coming year. If you have a chance to see them live, DO NOT MISS THEM. They are a force to be reckoned with live and it is there that they truly shine in all their glory. There are precious few bands playing today that work as hard for their audience, and not many at all that respect and engage their audience so directly as The Frames. They simply love playing music and they love playing it for you.

Burn The Maps is a beautiful album and a wonderful counterpoint to that live experience. It is a terrific piece of work, as you'd expect from the lads, with wonderful highs and lows, broad sonic landscapes and quiet intimate tunes, lush arrangements, heartfelt lyrics and epic aspirations. Many of the tracks have a similar feel in the way they build towards climactic crescendos of sound and outpouring of emotion. For the first time on a Frames album it really feels like a cohesive band collaboration, rather than previous efforts. Compare it to previous albums where often Hansard's songs were most likely worked up into band numbers, which worked extremely well too, but was simply different to the current approach. For that reason, this album should be of interest to musicians and songwriters evrywhere.

Hansard continues to produce some of the most interesting and evocative lyrics around, and his singing seems to go from strength to strength. A really great front man. Colm Mac Con Iomaire's violin plays a central and significant role on this album, and deservedly so, as in many ways he defines the sound and energy of all that the band does. Joe Doyle's bass playing is spot on and his backing vocals are given a more prominent role on this record, and every song is the better for it. Rob Bochnik's contribution is also immeasurable. His ability to fill and add detail to The Frames songs makes him the unsung hero of the record in my book.

If you are a newcomer to The Frames, this may not be the best record with which to begin (perhaps "Setlist" for the live flavour and "For the Birds" for the stunning brilliance of their songs in a studio based environment) but it is a real grower of an album and deserves an extended stay in your CD player. There are songs for every occasion, and you'll not hear a more beautiful pop chorus this year than the opening track Happy.

This year is the year of The Frames and its about time. They earned their moment in the sun. I wish them every success and I'll continue to catch them live any time they play near me.

Kalle

I have not been so excited about a group since 1971. And never have listened to a CD more times than I've listened to The Frames' Fitzcarraldo.....but then I got that before Burn The Maps.
There's not a moment of instrumental superflash a la Hendrix, rarely a lyric that astonishes a la Dylan........but no one on the planet sings with more heart than Glen Hansard.....many songs are like an entire play with soft, lulling passages opening into scenes of stormy yelling drama......

And there's a tightness to this group, whose absolute center is Hansard.......and which has been going in various incarnations since 1990...............and a uniqueness (I loosely think of it as Irish alt-rock-folk)
to the sound, the tone, the lyric........the blend of it all.........
I guess the one proviso is that you have to like moody and romantic and rock and lyrical all together. I can't stand overly sentimental stuff, so
the fact that The Frames can put so much emotion, longing, sorrow, anger, memory into a song without ever being cloying is miraculous.
I have never seen a better concert than The Frames in Portland, Oregon in 2005.........and of perhaps 10,000 CDs I've listened to in my life...........would place Fitzcarraldo and Burn The Maps in the top 1%.........listen to Burn The Maps without expecting anything in particular..........and be ready to go somewhere both strange yet wonderfully familiar
With most groups, I know where I stand on their music within a few notes of each song, certainly by the time I get thru a CD. The Frames start out with me thinking they're really good, and by the third time thru.......I am sent back decades to the excitement (though quite a different style of music) of being a teen-age fan listening to the Kinks, or Dylan, or Cream.

Recently voted Best Irish Band in the Meteor Awards, expectations rest heavily on The Frames. Four years after the platinum-selling, For the Birds, Burn The Maps could be the album that propels The Frames to the zenith of their career. It could also mark the site of what might have been.

Every band has a strong point; be it the gravel of Johnny Cash, the intricacies of Lambchop, or the poetry of Dylan. For the Frames, it's the ability to be aggressively brash one moment and violently quiet the next. Some songs need canyons to breathe, but some sit quietly in the corner of the room. Burn the Maps doesn't start by kicking the door down. Opener, Happy, begins with solitary, gloomy acoustic followed by simple bass and drums. Glen Hansard's boy soprano melody glides over the top. It's very restrained, but with intimations of something more abandoned. The martial rhythms and brutal guitar enter next with single, Finally. Full of conviction and doubt, the vocals break into an anguished cry with the violin circling overhead like a vulture eyeing its prey. This is the Frames we know doing what they do best. In typical fashion, they pull the volume right down for the next track before bursting forth once more.
The whole record speaks with the melancholy bitterness of a disappointed lover, ricocheting between resentment and regret, love and hate, art and blood. Full of big songs but sung with the conviction they need, the album's centrepiece is Fake, The Frames' answer to Smashing Pumpkins' Today. Soaring riffs merge with infectious melodies to disguise the honest lyrics. The `A' side builds up to this crescendo, with the `B' side coming back down, finishing how it started. Underglass is worth mention for its driving bassline, towering chorus and haunting verse. It's their darkest album to date, but the openness brings a feel of authenticity. If it gets the recognition it deserves, the Frames will be huge.

Andrew Williamson

Honestly, I could write endlessly about how incredible this band is both on cd and live in concert but I really wouldn't be saying anything different from all the other reviewers. I guess the greatest compliment I can give Glen and the rest of the band is that on Friday, I am flying from Vancouver, Canada to London for four days and my sole reason for going is to attend The Frames show on February 20, 2007. If you get the chance to see this amazing band live, you should grab it. They are the #1 live band.

this record, trying not to sound too cliched, is just....(just)short of being a masterpiece. Were it not for the somewhat poppy "fake" - which has been touted as a Smashing Pumpkins rip off and the radiohead-esque (on a bad day in the studio) "ship caught in the bay" - which for me simply doesn't work - this album would be no.1 on that list. These tracks do however help contrast the greatness of the 10 others, and this greatness really does eclipse those, shall i venture to say, "lapses in judgement". Given fake was the bait for younger teenie boppers to shell out their parent's cash, but songs like "me and my boyfriend" or "people all get ready" could easily have taken the place of "ship caught in the bay". The other tracks....ah.. the other tracks. What a joy. Not a bad moment among them. Colm mac an Iomaire's violin antics (his looped recordings really does give an orchestral feel to the songs) greatly aided the almost frames-trademarked gradual build up from quiet to loud. The final 3 songs, "keepsake", "suffer in silence" and "locusts" make up possibly the best outtro to an album my, in reviewing terms, relatively young ears have heard. and the intro isn't bad either.
Thoroughly recommended.

On a first listen, this album may not grab you by the little fella's, but after 3 rotations you just can't stop listening to it. Every other review told you everything you already need to know-buy it, enjoy it and catch them live! I've been watching them live for 6/7 years, at least 3 times a year and have not become bored yet!

The Frames do have quite a history but one that still hasn't made it far out of Ireland. And despite their obvious live presence and devoted worldwide fan base probably never will. Their sideways storytelling style and their reeling rolling music are more about substance than the style required to sell millions of albums.

Burn the Maps is a cracker of a disc. It still possesses that sleepy style of 'From The Birds' but invests some of that pop and crackle from 'Dance the Devil'. Basically this album has a couple of clear singles in 'Happy' and 'Fake' which 'For the Birds' just didn't have. Whether this makes 'Burn...' a better album is entirely up to you.

To me this one is an easier listen. The first three tracks suck you in with their familiarity born from them being all round catchy tunes then we wander into atmospheric introspectiveness and passion that Frames fans have come to expect.

At times the quiet/loud progression in song after song can get a little tedious - change of tempo can sometimes be so much fun but when it's the same from and to tempo time after time.......hmmm. Cheap shot perhaps but you can't give them a perfect score can you?

In the end what keeps this disc moving along is Colm's violin. It's just so persuasive and at times very reminiscent of Warren Ellis from The Dirty Three and Nick Cave's Bad Seeds. Combine that violin with Glenn Hansard's voice and lyrical expression then you have a slow burn winner.

I suspect The Frames are getting better and better as musicians and composers and I fully intend to stay with them till next time.

This is a truly great album. It sounds a bit like a mix of the shins and modest mouse. Or perhaps just like the shins with a bit more edge and violins.

Finally, A caution to the birds, Underglass, Keepsake, and the excellent final song Locusts are the highlights.

Best moments on the cd: the first time he yells at 1:49 into Finally "when your wants something so much..." bleeding into, "when you found something that good
It's hard to focus on what's right."

And then the peak of the album 57 seconds into Underglass, screaming:
"I want it less than you ever have, I will not accept your disappointment man." Underglass really ranks up there with 'Closer' and 'Killing in the Name of' for songs that sound excellent when your angry.

The last three songs work well together, building up to a repitious, slow and powerful conclusion in Locust: "I'm moving off I'm packing up I'm willing to be wrong. "

This is probably The Frames darkest album. It definitely sets unsettling mood throughout. But it also has some of their most rocking tunes that you just get swept up by. "Finally" the second track on the CD is possibly the most captivating openings to a rock song ever. It's so bitter in tone and yet so fun to sing along to! A lot of songs on this album also fall into their signature format "opening soft and whispy, building, adding layers of violin, rocking the hell out, bombast intensity, and suddenly cutting back to the melodic quiet of the opening..."
And this album adds a bit of electronic bits and beeps into the mix for some interesting affect. Sort of in a Radiohead vibe...but with their own distinct vibe. There's some soundscape experimenting ala Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo on "A Caution to the Birds".
I think "Burn the Maps" has some of the The Frames best stand alone songs...even if it doesn't tie together as a complete album as well as "For the Birds".
My personal favorites are "Dream Awake" (pretty much a definitive Frames song), "Sideways Down" (channeling a bit of the Pixies), Fake (should have been their big pop single), Keepsake (another perfect example of what the Frames do best!). The last song, "Locusts" is almost a foreshadowing to Glen Hansards solo work on "Once" and "The Swell Season".

Mix the subtle intelligence of radiohead with damien rice's beauty, and of course, chuck in a few violin solos, and you get the Frames, who, with burn the maps, have made one of the finest albums to come out of Ireland in quite a while.

Burn the Maps is one huge, draining journey that leaves you with songs like the haunting Locusts, the epic finally, and sublime opener happy, this album demands you turn down the lights, turn the volume up, and listen hard.