Customer Reviews

The Golden River

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

(i'm actually 29). please buy this album. yes, there IS hope for rock. it's right here. right in front of us. this is gorgeous, beautiful, perfected music that only frog eyes knows how to play. the band is a complete original. frog eyes along with animal collective gave me hope that new GOOD, nay PERFECT pop songs can be written without any obvious influences(people who say they sound like tom waits.. are you kidding?). there is just no comparison or let up on this album. it is perfectly executed by the canada foursome and is very pleasing to the ear while always having a feeling of 'off-kilter' careening melodies that always resolve themselves into a distinctive melancholy/exstatic state and leave you with no option but to push the repeat button. original, experimental, an excellent album to first experience the frog eyes' skewed perspective of music. five stars for all three of their full-length albums.
if you are out there and feel crushed by the ennui of the current pop(and even indie) releases these days, you owe it to yourself to listen to these guys and gain some much needed hope for the future of music. peace.

The album is great, but a heads up to buyers: the tracklisting above is incorrect. The album has 11 tracks, begins with "One in Six Children Will Flee in Boats" and ends with "The Secret Map Flees from Plurality".

I tried to figure out what album is being listed, but the hilarious titles are all too generic to decipher.

Word up.

this is one of my favorite albums ever. a common reference point i use to illustrate the power of this record is neutral milk hotel's in the aeroplane over the sea, but that's only to demonstrate the power, feeling, scope, and majesty of this music. i would never describe it as sounding like NMH, 'cause it certainly doesn't; it is the work of a singular, unique talent, a band totally in control of their sound and sounding like nothing else.

singer carey mercer has an odd voice and sings with passion and intensity. the lyrics are a weird twisted fever dream about war, witches, and woodcutters (among other things). the lyrics may not always make sense literally, but the melodies they give birth to are beyond mere words.

mercer's guitar playing ability is as unique as his voice, crafting spidery guitar lines and oddly strummed chord changes. drummer melanie campbell is also a force to be reckoned with, playing drums with a very musical, intuitive style. her beats are off-kilter and puncuated by the frequent use of a large metal object that goes "ding."

part of what makes this album so great is the cacaphonous (but oh so beautiful) swirl of guitar, drums, and keyboards, which pull off that classic chaotic-but-totally-together sound, contrasted with mercer's unhinged vocals.

it truly comes down to the songs, though, and in this aspect frog eyes truly shine. every song either stomps, plods, crawls or explodes its way into your heart. it's hard to pick a highlight on an album that is truly an album and not just a collection of songs, but if i had to single one out it'd be the slow builder "a latex ice age" which is one of those chill-inducing musical masterpieces you may have heard of, but never heard. treat yourself to this album. you deserve it.

like mania at three-quarter speed and carnivalesque in a way that can't decide between beauty and danger so goes for them both of course we've heard elsewhere that one can't have the one without the other. if there were horns and the music was folksier I'd pull out a Neutral Milk Hotel reference but that does not quite do the trick for this mostly slow tempo work that nonetheless rushes along to its next unpredictable vocal line underscored by a methodical instrumental repetition of something that doesn't quite hold together like a hook but draws you in further to see what the matter with it is and then you realize the matter is precisely the reason you can't forget it. organs and bells and drums. reference has been made to Tom Waits and if you love him you might love this in all its bipolarity and speedball ambience but expect even more in the way of impending musical catastrophe. if the songs rush to their ends it is to keep them, through sheer forward momentum, from flying off in all directions. although one suspects that even if they did disintegrate they'd leave a pretty heap when it was all over.

if you can brave the wilds of loose song structure and unconventional vocals or indeed if you adore such things but still have a soft spot for the well-turned musical phrases, be they evanescent and rarely repeated, this is the one.

This seems redundant, but just wanted to add to the chorus of amazed praise for this album. Full of contrasts that aren't really contrasts: mostly gorgeous, yet in constant danger of completely falling apart.....filled with all sorts of melodic and lyrical hooks that stick in the mind like the catchiest choruses or the most uplifting bridges in the best of mainstream music, yet impressionistically loose in structure and lyrically surreal (not shallow surreality, but the good sort in which nonsense and vulgarity are stitched together in all their combinations under the guise of tradition in order to provoke deep emotion and thought; just the fact that the lyrics are sung with such conviction almost forces them into meaningfulness). In this sense, the Bowie comparisons, while apt, should be clarified, particularly given Bowie's chameleonic musical and vocal forms. "Golden River" is like taking Bowie's most powerful moments and stretching them to their full possibilities (although this is not say that "Golden River" could be confused with a Bowie record--I'm just trying to give you something to grasp onto, and Bowie's a good/well-known touchstone). More specifically, pretty much the entirety of this record sounds like the following: imagine the "whoosh!" moment in any of Bowie's best pop/rock hybrids when the music has reached its delirious peak of simultaneous beauty and kickassedness and you feel like you just jumped off the cliffs of Dover (maybe think of "Life on Mars" right as the chorus is kicking in; I've never been to Dover, but similes are regional animals and should be left unmolested)...then add several more instruments/effects, but not enough to sound like distorted crap (props to whoever produced "Golden River," by the way).....then imagine Bowie's voice pouring into the mix, only a lot deeper and huskier (hence the Tom Waits--EARLY Tom Waits--comparisons), and not quite altogether there in a tranquilized sort of way, with the occasional high, crazy (but not annoying) tangent, all sounding prophetic and, again, utterly convinced. Bowie fans might consider all of this sacrilege, and Bowie-haters might be saying "ugh, why would I want to buy a 2003 wannabe version of 1970s-era Bowie." To the Bowie fans I say: I challenge you to listen to this record and tell me with a straight face that it doesn't rival Bowie's best in terms of power, scary beauty, and successful experimentalism. To the Bowie haters I say: you won't find the things you hate about Bowie here--Frog Eyes is something else entirely, a new, pretty much unclassifiable creature on the landscape. Now, of course, I feel a little weird basing my whole review on Bowie, so please discount it all--if you're a fan of amazing, visionary, horizon-stretching music, buy "Golden River."

ok so this cd completely blew me away. it's like a fantastical journey. a dream state. the music is layered rock/folk music. the vocals can sometimes echo david bowie, tom waits, ian curtis, and even at times jamie stewart from xiu xiu. so its very over the top dramatic singing set to lilting trance like music. this cd is not to be missed and it is definately one of the best of 2003

There's not a more compelling band out there right now. Every song screams brilliance. It's a wonder they're not more well known than they are. Give me this over Wolf Parade, Arcade Fire or any number of indie bands that should bow to these guys.

The singer's voice and style doesn't call anyone else to mind (nor does the music itself). This is one of those rare albums that hit me the first time I listened to it. If you're into this, definitely check out another epic album of theirs "The Bloody Hand" which isn't nearly as accessible as this one, but awesome nonetheless. The new album "Tears of the Valedictorian" is real cool too, but I'd definitely start here.

this music has to be heard to be believed. listen to the samples or something. or do a file-share search and listen to some full songs. or just blindly buy the album. i cannot accurately capture the full scope of the bands style. I think it sounds like a weird mixture of tom waits and modest mouse, with a singer who sounds like the manic twin of xiu xiu's jamie curtis.
the golden river is a collection of frantic songs that are delivered with operatic intensity. Vocalist Carey Mercer dramatically strains his voice to a variety of pitches to accurately capture the proper emotions of his tales of kings, nobles, witches and armies(a bit like the decemberists or fiery furnaces). This band is really amazing and i cannot seem to find to right words to describe them. i suppose that means i should let the music speak for itself.

The first thing you will notice is the crazy vocal style. He is like a dramatic singing wildman. Tom Waits esque. He doesnt sing so much as sing/speak. He hints at the melody.

The songs are organic and full of smelly life harkening back 100 years ago in early 20th Century America.

You may not be able to make out much of what he says.

A lot of the songs are difficult to tell apart untill many listens.

But its interesting.

Thats all I can say right now.

I am retiring from making music, thank you Mr. Mercer.