VINYL RECORDS / Frank (just Frank) - The Brutal Wave (2010) LP (item no.: V443)

Label: Wierd
Released: July 6th, 2010

Wierd Records proudly presents the debut album from Frank(just Frank) from Paris, France entitled The Brutal Wave. The Brutal Wave draws from many rich traditions of US and UK guitar driven wave, minimal synth, early black metal and new indie rock from Brooklyn respectively - layering lush washes of atmospheric anglophilic guitars above a warmly orchestral analogue synth and drum machine fueled minimal electronic backdrop. Equally of disparate origins are the band members themselves, Chris was born in New Jersey and grew up with half-Indian Kirti in the South of France, although both were schooled in London. Despite such varied influences and backgrounds, Frank(just Frank) indeed proudly embrace the French pop musical tradition and present a freshly recontextualized version of the french cold wave sound, which might well be most appropriately called ‘La Vague Froide Moderne’ in 2010.

The album presents a carefully crafted set of nine trax in which shiver-inducing swathes of guitars, restrained and mournful, battle alongside and often it seems directly against bitingly insistent vocals, that effortlessly switch between French and English. No lyrical themes are off limits for the apparently fearless young band, as the poetically flowing voice espouses tales ranging from provocatively 'centrist' takes on international politics to vulnerably personal epics of heartbreak and addiction, and these tensions between right and left, darkness and light, and private versus public consistently replay themselves throughout the record, both in the lyrical content and the musical dynamics at work. This powerfully emotional record is made with simultaneous confrontation and restraint, as well as viscerally sensitized homemade DIY intimacy and feverishly swaggering aggression, and it is this balancing act and interplay of extremes that Frank(just Frank) harnesses to carve out The Brutal Wave!

Click on the Product Specification link to listen to Frank (just Frank) on their MySpace.