Back in August we introduced THE COUNT, both the new album from New York favourites Frog and said album’s mysterious narrator. The concept album sees lead Daniel Bateman “assume the persona of the titular count, a figure straight out of some Warren Zevon song,” as we wrote, “full of shady history, personal mythology and perhaps even a supernatural edge.” Indeed, Bateman provided a lengthy statement of his own to get fans acquainted with the backstory of the album, describing how The Count began to appear at various locales around New York, tall and tautly muscular, in possession of a magnetic yet mysterious charisma. Distinctive but impossible to pin down, a little too much to take in properly. As Bateman continued:
There were whispers of associations with various underworld figures, and multiple unsubstantiated accounts of past employment as both a mercenary in North Africa and as a seaplane pilot somewhere near Guadalajara, or maybe Guam. You couldn’t really place his accent, which seemed to somehow waver between thick Alabama drawl and rural Minnesotan twang, but his speech was thick with New York area slang that only a native would ever employ. He almost always smelled of sweat, marijuana smoke, and alcohol. He was meticulously groomed, and his face was never unshaven. On first glance, you’d have thought he was in his late 20s, but occasionally there was a deep weariness that showed behind his eyes that only someone older, maybe even a lot older, ever has.
If all that wasn’t spectacle enough, this figure sat down in front of a piano and began to play. Music “stranger than any the audience had ever heard” as Bateman puts it, The Count entering a kind of trance as he played, then shapeshifting before the audience’s very eyes. “He was now a drunken lounge singer in a darkened booth, now a penitent in despair kneeling in a wooden pew, now a redneck with ripped overalls and broken banjo strings.”
THE COUNT serves as a record of this fantastical apparition, its sound following predecessor 1000 Variations on the Same Song in reaching in a myriad of directions simultaneously. Frog shapeshifting, or rather soundshifting, just like their titular figure, all while sticking to the DNA that has won them such loyal backing. “Frog are still very much Frog,” as we concluded in our preview. “Strange, unpredictable and oddly heartbreaking.”
Latest single ‘SAX-A-MA-PHONE VAR. XII’ offers a glimpse at yet another face of this multifaceted album. A sleek and sultry groove born of The Count’s womanising tendencies (“he was intensely aware of the presence of every woman within a 2-square-block radius and made a lasting impression on all of them that they didn’t completely understand,” as Bateman’s preview stated). The result is something between lounge croon and hip hop brag, our would be lothario making what might be promises or threats to any potential love interests who happen to stumble into the room.
They wanna meet me ‘cus I’m leaving so soon
Before you know it all your clothes is on the floor
And his breath hot on your neck just like before
And his hand upon your chest o Jesus lord
Call the missus call the press you gon’ be sore
October 15th – First Unitarian Church, Philadelphia, PA
October 16th – Bottlerocket Social Hall, Pittsburgh, PA
October 17th – Third Man Records, Detroit, MI
October 18th – The Empty Bottle, Chicago, IL
October 20th – Grog Shop, Cleveland Heights, OH