(Plateau Records/Spunk)

Sixth studio album from Irish quintet

Behind its wonderfully lush packaging (one of the reasons I hope downloads don’t completely take over), Ireland’s The Frames create a beautifully played and produced collection of melancholic folk-rock on this, their sixth long player.  This is the music that plays over the top of a European actress (a young Liv Ullmann, perhaps?) staring out of an immaculately photographed window, as rain pitter-patters gently on the glass.  Indeed at times, as in Bad Bone, the gloomy imagery reaches almost Bergman-esque levels of angst: “When the anger that you feel turns to poison in your soul, then the scars you only feel will start to show”.  While the band has the considerable skill to make inner turmoil sound attractive, it must be said gracefully dark music is done with more passion and intensity by our own Augie March.  Frontman Glen Hansard claims this is their seventies folk record, steeped in early Elton John, yet too many of these songs shrug forlornly when they should soar.

**½

MATT THROWER

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