The Frames Live In Montreal
Left Hip writer Morgan Murray on the Frames live in Montreal.
The first time I saw The Frames was a couple of years ago in Prague, Czech Republic. It was the second week of a term abroad and me and the other weirdoes I went with had grown tired of the customary “nice bum, where ya from?” getting-to-know-ya talk and were already growing weary of being baffled by all things Czech at all times in all places and when we saw that a band who sang pop songs in English were in town we all said “yes please, thank you.” Never mind the fact that there wasn’t a single one of us who had heard of The Frames before that day. We managed to listen to their latest single “Dream Awake” on the interweb, but that did little to console us, it was somewhat sissy Irish sap. Nevertheless, we all bundled up in our bright I-am-a-foreigner-gawk-at-me parkas and touques and shuffled through the Prague winter night lost looking for a band we had only heard one mediocre song from in a venue we had no idea where to even begin looking. But we knew what a show played by a band that sang pop songs in English looked like and felt like and sounded like. It looked, felt, and sounded like home, and that is what we all needed just then.
Eventually we found the place. The opening act was a local group, Slot & Shade, who had the best use of Rock Clarinet I had ever seen and sang pop songs in English and they made no sense because we were pretty sure no one in the band actually spoke English (“Save your soul to comprehend this world/Be more friendly to be my friend/See the smile of childhood hurts like fish/Never lose your erosion…” – “To Comprehend”). Slot & Shade make for an amusing story to email to your aunts and uncles and pull out at haughty McGill parties when you move to Montreal after graduation and only hang out with students, but the magic of that evening was The Frames. My four new best friends and I raved the entire way back to the communist era dorms about what an amazing show it was. And it was. It has never happened to me before or since that I have gone to a show, saw a band I have never heard of, and ended up singing along. To this day the five of us all list The Frames as one of our favourite bands, their 2005 album Burn the Maps as one of our favourite albums, that show on that cold Czech night as one of our favourite shows of all time, and we remain best of friends despite none of us living in the same province, let alone country (New Zealand, Honduras, Japan, Vancouver, Montreal).
Back in February of this year, nearly two years to the day of seeing The Frames in Prague I got an email from one of The Frames Five notifying me that The Frames had a new album, and a Canadian tour upcoming (not to mention lead singer Glen Hansard’s side project with Czech pianist Marketa Irglova Swell Season, and the movie the two made together called Once). I got excited, very excited. I also got nostalgic, very nostalgic. I wrote lengthy emails and Facebook messages to members of the Frames Five. I bought tickets to a surely not to be sold out show a month in advance on the internet and paid extra to have them couriered to me, as to not have them lost in the mail. I hung them on the wall above my light switch and they were the last things I saw before I went to bed every night. Oh, lord! I just re-read what I just wrote and it makes me look like a total bat-shit insane groupie. That isn’t true. I was just excited, really excited, about the chance to relive such a wondrous experience.
The night of the show arrived and my friend dressed like an employed elementary school teacher and I dressed like an unemployed Jr. high substitute science teacher and set off across town. We arrived part way through the Young Galaxy’s set. They bored the both of us. However, the did salvage some semblance of respectability at the end of their set as they apparently saved all of their energy for the last when they went crazy for about 2 minutes, but it was your standard sort of rock show crazy that may have been antithetical for a pretentious philosophy 101 band like them, but it was the only thing memorable of an otherwise forgettable set. We went to the bar and got a couple of cokes.
When I saw the Frames last time they were wearing coordinated outfits of dark jeans and black dress-shirts. So I hollered in my friend’s ear “they are going to be wearing coordinated outfits, you will fall in love with the singer and they WILL blow your mind.” They weren’t in coordinated outfits, the band was, but lead singer Glen Hansard looked like he just rolled out of bed. Nevertheless, we all fell in love with Glen, and they DID blow our minds.
The set started off with a couple of their new songs off of their new album which I hadn’t heard much of beforehand. They were nothing too spectacular, considering their new album may not be their best work, but it does grow on you. The first two songs were played without introduction or a break and then when the band stopped for slurps of beers between songs two and three and the crowd broke out into a spontaneous rendition of Happy Birthday for Glen. It was then you could actually feel the night take a turn from so-far-so-good to incredible, and it didn’t look back as the band flew into Keepsake, which to my mind is one of the most bittersweet songs of all time.
I am a hardened and cynical asshole who was raised on a farm in the backwoods of west Central Alberta so I have seen a lot of things and don’t get emotional about much, or anything, but The Frames had me sighing on the verge of tears several times through their set. And it wasn’t because of the nostalgic pangs of times and feelings I had attached to their songs, if it were you should stop reading this now and find me and slap me for wasting your time with nostalgic tripe. It is just what The Frames do. They suck you incompletely and suddenly it is just you and the band and you are singing along to songs you didn’t even know and you are swaying back and forth with a few hundred others in the same state. Watching these men play these bittersweet and truly beautiful songs is an amazing experience, but being on that stage and seeing the people’s faces react to these songs must also make for an amazing experience. Which explains why The Frames put on such remarkably tender and intimate live shows. Why you cannot help but fall in love with Glen. Why you cannot help but have your mind blown.
We staggered out of the venue beaming and sweaty two-and-a half hours after The Frames played their first song. Two-and-a half hours of incredible music interspersed with Glen’s incredible, hilarious, and enchanting banter—the highlight was his Bono banter in response to a fan shouting “you should be bigger than U2.” Glen let rip with a hilarious feck and shite-filled tirade about how playing in front of 40,000 people would suck and how short Bono is, which led into another great song (it was one right after another). Coming out of the song Glen says, “feck it, I’d kill to be as big as U2, show me the money!” Ah… we all laughed like we were all good friends hanging out in Glen’s living room after he cooked us haggis and he just told a funny story.
During the encore Glen asked his friend from Montreal who was in the audience to come on stage and do something as a birthday gift. The guy, I can’t remember his name, Andrew or Anthony or Alex or some other name that doesn’t start with an A, took requests from the audience and ended up doing a hand-stand, a hilarious imitation of Glen’s Bono rant, and then busted some crazy Napolean Dynamite-esque dance moves.
The Frames followed Arthur, or Axel’s dancing with a few more songs, including Star Star, which I haven’t been able to stop singing since (“Star star teach me how to shine, shine. Teach me so that I can know what is going on in your mind.” Listen to it on their website (www.theframes.ie) from the album Dance the Devil). As the crowd was humming along to the ending of the last song The Frames had in their repertoire Glen asked, as part of an experiment, if we all would continue humming the notes as we quietly shuffled out of the venue while the band played on. So we all politely applauded a performance that demanded so much more appreciation than polite applause, and we silently shuffled out humming a few bittersweet notes while the band played us out. It was the perfect conclusion to the closest I have ever come to seeing a perfect show. Afterwards my friend and I wandered the streets with glee-filled giddy speechlessness and as we walked through all the shenanigans of the bar and night club district all the drunken fist-fights and domestic disputes seemed a million miles away and all we heard was the humming and the Star Star as we drank cokes and ate bagels and grinned at one another.
(The Frames new record The Cost is available on Anti- Records. Check out their very good website at www.theframes.ie or MySpace (www.myspace.com/theframesofficial). And if at all possible find them live; they will change your life. As for Slot & Shade, I think they broke up.)
Virgin Mobile Festival / The Swell Season
Rain Rain
Go Away
Marketa Irglova
Glen Hansard
Encore -
