LP REVIEW
We’ve once again let our literary critic and resident Istanbul satellite Ayfer Simms loose. This time articulately lending a poetic exuberance to the new LP, Kind of Blah, by the hazy New York noise-niks Frog.
Frog ‘Kind of Blah’
(Audio Antihero) LP
A window. Scorching summer day, metal staircase and an alley. New York.
The breeze blows from the right, bringing with it a country sounding shine and bouncy melodies. It comes from the left and exudes an upbeat Indie abandon; from a distance, a concert hall with a languorous jazzy/rock atmosphere: All the styles wrapped around a gentle voice, while the heavy red bricks of New York cast a shadow from within.
With this album a surprise is around every corner; unexpected imagery, memories, impressions, alley cats, trumpets, noises, guitars, subtle effects, it’s definitely summer in the city and there is something dark, a world, seedy, defection, alienation, all sang lightly in a masticated slang, while the light gushes in a small apartment like a rolling wave, as if picked up by some artists in the street and thrown like a fire ball, gathering a fierce style on its passage: We forget the room, we go far, travel in time and space: There’s an air of intellectual mingling crashing through the guitar notes, all the neighbours are awoken and they want to join the party. Let’s knock on door 79!
The album is a guitar made of jazz, all improvised and rich, a ballroom filled with alternative shoegazers, beach boys waltzing in New York; snaps shots of images, the gloomy portrayed with words but not by sound, a bursting energy of chords and drums.
“The city is a womb of brown brick beds of clay”. Despite the lyrics coloured with a rough poetic rebellion, distorted with unusual additions the tone is joyful, catchy and soothing.
The orchestra bursts, it is made of modern guitars, heads are lost in a kind of sweaty trance, and we sing, “All dogs go to heaven”. The album is made out of a thousand pieces, smells, the abandon found in rock music from the 60s mixed with smoky parties on a staircase, civil unrest, wars, disheveled women running down the streets, “Countless boroughs filled with bars, all that matters is the scars”, kids and sulphuric temperature rises. It’s hot in New York tonight with Frog.
Words: Ayfer Simms
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