Frog share 8th album ‘Frog for Sale’
It’s a top contender for album of the year.
★★★★★
Photo: Therese Burgo and WFUV
Every now and then, you hear a record that can’t help but make you smile. A record that somehow sounds new and exciting yet also manages to sound oddly warm and familiar. If you’re lucky, that record might just be crammed full of songs so infectious that after hearing them just once, they make you wonder how you could have possibly ever lived without them. This is exactly how I felt when I first heard Frog for Sale.
Frog for Sale is the latest album by the New York band Frog, which is led by multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Daniel Bateman alongside his little brother Steve on drums and percussion. Since 2013, Frog have released a string of critically acclaimed albums that have been lauded by many, including the likes of Wednesday and MJ Lenderman.
As their eighth studio album, Frog for Sale is an album that reminds us why we love music so much in the first place. It is as wild and unpredictable as it is utterly, oddly comforting. It is strange and bewildering. Yet, it is overflowing with irresistible hooks and melodies that burn themselves deep inside your brain.
As the album opens with the innocuous and unassuming Bad Time To Fall In Love Again, what stands out most is Daniel Bateman’s strange and wonderfully melodic vocals. They are delivered with so much unique character that they can’t help but reel you in right from the start. In fact, Frog for Sale is so full of life that it feels like every single song has its own distinct personality. As the album goes on, we meet songs that take turns as exciting as they are surprising.
Yonder This Way Comes, for example, takes us on a country detour before crashing us back into the Darcy Clay-infused-with-R&B sounding Stole My Heart. As much as Frog for Sale is a glorious dive into the wonderful eccentricities of Daniel Bateman’s mind, it is above all a collection of wonderfully addictive and endearing songs.
Just when you think you’ve heard it all, though, we encounter a wonderfully bizarre song about a prostitute called Max Von Side-Eye. The song encapsulates everything that makes Frog for Sale such a joy to experience. As Bateman asks, “If it constitutes an absolutely capital offence to be lonely?”, I am left wondering how someone can write a song that is simultaneously so strange, funny, infectious and yet, somehow, also so deeply moving and touching at the same time.
Musically, these songs feel like a celebration of the music that Bateman loves. Whether it’s the lo-fi pop quirkiness of Paul McCartney’s first self-titled album, the driving locomotive melodies of Elliott Smith or the nostalgic melancholy of Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison. It all adds up to a unique record that deserves to sit right alongside its influences.
Discovering Frog for Sale is nothing short of an absolute joy. It’s impossible not to hear a song like Lois Lane without bursting into a huge grin. It is jubilant and celebratory, and its chorus is one of the most insanely joyful and rousing choruses I have heard all year. Honestly, I could write entire reviews about every single song on this album.
I could tell you all about the hilariously irresistible Best Buy or the soaring, ascending crescendos of second single Dark Out. In reality, you are better off just listening to this album for yourself. Frog for Sale is as weird as it is wonderful. It surprises you just as much as it charms you. Its songs are already buried so deeply inside my heart and my head that I genuinely fear they may never leave. I hope that they don’t. It feels like mine, but I’m pretty confident that it will feel like yours, too. For the past thirteen years, Frog may have become indie music’s best-kept secret. Let’s make sure not to keep it that way.
Frog for Sale is out now via Audio Antihero / tapewormies.
