|
|
| |
|
|
BURN THE MAPS
(Anti-)
|
|
|
|
|
|
This Irish group have been plugging away for the past few years at a kind of measured folk rock that’s delicate enough to evoke comparisons with fellow acoustic-minded Dubliner Damien Rice but sturdy enough to support the occasional gusts of distorted guitar they use to spruce up sentiments like the one frontman Glen Hansard floats in "Finally." "And the lie that cut the worst," he sings over ragged power chords and a martial snare roll, "has been resolved and reversed." On Burn the Maps, the Frames’ fifth studio album (and the follow-up to last year’s live Set List), Hansard and his mates reconcile those folk and rock aspects of their sound as well as they ever have. The thrill of "Finally" and "Fake" isn’t necessarily in hearing them go from dashboard-confessional soft to shout-it-out loud (though Dave Odlum, who used to play guitar in the band, deserves notice for his crisp production) but in how naturally they make that transition. Unlike Nirvana and the Pixies, the inventors of modern alt-rock’s soft-loud dynamic, the Frames don’t turn it up to vent their outsized feelings; they do it because sometimes their feelings vent themselves. (The Frames appear this Wednesday, March 2, at the Paradise Rock Club, 967 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston; call 617-562-8800.)
|
