Many reviews of Kind of Blah, the new album from Queens duo Frog, mention the fact it was recorded in a disused bowling alley. This is the sort of throw-away factoid that pads the introduction to many a piece of music journalism, but here it feels kind of vital. I mean, it was probably just a big empty room, but don’t let that destroy the vision. A place that is at once sad and wonderful, full of promises that didn’t quite come true. The air smells of grime and disinfectant and stale sweat and the garish walls display murals of anthropomorphised pins and neon curlicues which seep through a layer of dust and cobwebs. The furniture is latent: pinsetters and ball returns and plastic furniture and broken lights and fucked-up television screens that still display the made-up names and mediocre scores of late-night teenage excursions. The little cafe area is decorated with outdated soda logos and candy slogans and pictures of those mildly radioactive slush puppy drinks and the floor is littered with dead shoes of various sizes. The scene is alluring, fascinating, precious. There is something in the air, a ripple, a remnant of fun or cheer or maybe just the laughter of ghosts you love dearly.
Kind of Blah is a product of this place, an album imbued with the spirits of a sparkling past. Skipping between styles and themes and pop culture references at will, the record is a multifaceted wormhole leading to the various Americas that have existed in the last 50-60 years. There is no prevailing emotion or tone, instead everything is present, a musically-original-yet-strangely-televisual mishmash of eye-opening, heart-lifting, soul-destroying possibilities. Hopeful, fearful and melancholic, joyful, delusional and apathetic, the album takes on the appearance of a bustling city – or rather several versions of the same city superimposed over one another – overwhelming in its detail, home to everything and more. These scenes share a common thread, the American demand for fun and heartbreak and the constant battle to ignore just how empty these sources of entertainment prove to be. Apologies for the long quote but opener ‘All Dogs Go to Heaven’ captures this perfectly:
“The city is a womb of brown brick beds of clay
outside of the bars the lakers are on in the alleyway
but it shines from a time when the waitresses were fine and their
great big bosoms bulged through their hi, I’m jamie signs and
Jesus’s eyes glides across the storefronts as he longs for a city’s
past that drips into the present like honey from a heated glass
and
all dogs go to heaven
all songs end in quiet refrains
smart moms buy generic say it tastes the same”
What’s more impressive is that the entire album is equally quotable. ‘Fucking’ comes across as The Hold Steady meets Modest Mouse meets Ride, a weird aggressive teenage dream in which everything is hugely stimulating yet shot through with an unnamed emptiness that threatens to catch those that slow down (“out of sight out of mind, racing towards a decline”). ‘Wish Upon a Bar’ is a restrained, cross-generational bar crawl through New York with a Christmassy blend of nostalgia and regret, littered with killer lines like “bar moans with calzones and verses from the Rolling Stones.” Interestingly, in another very American-feeling twist, the two band members can be heard laughing in the background of the track, so that heart-on-the-sleeve sincerity and nudge-nudge-wink-wink irony are so intertwined it’s impossible to untangle them. The time-hopping continues on ‘Photograph’, a selection of memories lined up sentimentally like pictures on a mantel, while ”Everything 2002′ paints the innocent uninnocence of adolescents:
“I poured kerosene on my old dirty magazines
mom and dad don’t be mad at me
in a hole in a tree in the woods by the Mattingly’s
there’s a bag full of dvds
I run where no one can see and they’ll console me”
‘Knocking On The Door’ is sloppy classic country, complete with banjos and foot-stamping percussion, but the old-timey American sound masks the contemporary lyrics (McDonalds drive thrus where I kissed you and lied to you and the garbages sighed food as I told you you were mine”). ‘King Kong’ is frantic, the banjo racing as if played by an albino Dickey character and the lyrics spewing forth like those of some demented preacher, again giving the sensation of breakneck forward propulsion, a fevered conviction which ignores consequences (much like those on display in the titular movie). With ambient sound clips and gentle, emotive vocals, ‘Catchyalater’ brings to mind The Antlers in their In The Attic of The Universe stage. Again the song contains some irresistibly quotable lines:
“In comes the doctor in comes the nurse
in comes the lady with the alligator purse
and you turn on ‘lanis Morrisette and learn all the curses
but your aunt turns it off after one or two verses
and the punks say how ya doin’ motherfucker
and the punks say how ya doin’ motherfucker
and you root for Patrick Ewing
and you cant stop doin it you cant stop chewin’ it you tell her
catchyalater”
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Another American phenomenon is captured on ‘Irish Goodbye’, the melodramatic spilt followed by automotive escape to new locales and psychic health, while ‘Judy Garland’ is what Hank Williams would have sounded like had he fronted a lo-fi garage rock band. Without wishing to repeat what is now clear, the writing here is superb, somehow managing to capture in words and cadence the bizarre essence of America:
“Jesus couldn’t quell the pains
of Americas in trucks and trains
and tractor trailers on the range
barmen counting their change
and Goldwin Mayer Fred Astaire
slicking back his oily hair
snort benzedrine off of a mirror,
slaps her ass how are you dear
and all the preachers whistle nervous stare
down devils in the back of churches,
meet their luscious daughter in
the smalls beneath the boughs of birches”
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Judy Garland is America. Lusty teenagers are America. Jesus Christ is America. So is Dr Pibb and dusty valleys and shut-down bowling alleys and all the communal memories shared by millions just like you. Kind of Blah is America, the U S of A in eleven songs—quirky, joyous, breathless, exhausting, addictive, heartbreaking and downright weird, accelerating towards a distant horizon while keeping its eyes firmly on a halcyon past that sure seems like it should have been more fun.
The album is out now on Audio Antihero and you can buy it from the Frog Bandcamp page. Also, be sure to read our interview with Frog, and check out our review of their debut self-titled release.
Album artwork by Benjamin Shaw