This month, Audio Antihero is releasing Grog, the first Frog full-length since 2019, and the conditions in which the album was created tested this motivation more than anything to date. “Grog took a long time,” as lead Danny Bateman explains. “I had kids while making it, my job situation became a lot crazier.” These difficulties are reflected in the sound itself. This is the darkest Frog have ever sounded. “If Kind of Blah is set in New York, and Count Bateman is set in LA in the 70s, this one I think is set in Hades,” Bateman continues. “Every song is a step deeper into the abyss. At some point I’ve lost all ability to see the day light and the darkness envelops me.”

But in true Frog fashion, the record refuses to merely submerge itself in this darkness. Now joined by brother Steve, Bateman instead fashions these shadows into an endless array of madcap, atmospheric and often emotionally charged forms. “There are really exciting places we were able to get to on this record, places that I didn’t know existed before I found them,” as he continues. “It feels both gothic and cartoonish to me, big gargoyles, dark skies, storms, but the statues are of Aaahh!!! Real Monsters.” Take ‘Maybelline’, a song which exists beyond its sub-three minute runtime with a tale of youthful abandon, dangerous driving and a detective straight out of an Abel Ferrara flick, or ‘Black on Black on Black’, which submits to the dark tendrils of fate with the buoyant, widescreen swagger of the cinematically doomed.

Today we have the pleasure of sharing the album’s third single, ‘New Ro’. A song which turns its attention to home and thus takes on a decidedly more wistful tone than the previous tracks. “I don’t know if there’s relevant subtext for the song, besides the obvious,” as Bateman says. “Steve and I both grew up in New Rochelle, we went to New Rochelle High School, we recorded the entire album at our mom’s house in New Rochelle, we’re New Ro boys.” But of course, this wouldn’t be Frog without a level of self-awareness, and the conscious nod to ‘Country Roads’ serves as both a celebration of nostalgia and a joke at its expense.

Take me home, north on the Anne Hutchinson
Through the Bronx, back to the place where we’re from
Where the girls they put out in a car
And the pizza guys know where you are
New Rochelle New York
Ideally yours
New Rochelle New York
Had to go to court

Of course, home is about more than geography, and so ‘New Ro’ is not only an ode to a specific location, but a specific relationship too. Frog’s newly fraternal status is a key facet of the record—a seamless blend of obscure references, cryptic in-jokes and hard truths—and you wonder whether the songs could have been quite as daring, dark and strange without that inherent trust. Who else but siblings could hold fatalism and fun in the same breath? “My brother Steve became a real member of Frog for these recordings and I think the music we made together is a reflection of our relationship,” as Bateman concludes. “It is a joy to make music with people you love.”

Photos by Alex Coppola

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