I Am Frank by Frank From Blue Velvet is an Urban Cowboy of a record.
It is the kind of album you play when you’re three quarters of a bottle of Jack in, while the neon lights flash through your cheap hotel window and the rain lashes the streets. It’s the soundtrack to murder, to lost love buried in the back garden as the police kick down your door and you reach for your gun, reasoning that it’s better to go out in a blaze of glory than to let them take you alive. It is the music of the apocalypse – both literally and personally – and will lull you to sleep so you can dream of demons.
It is, quite frankly – heh, puns – fucking brilliant.
There is a heavy dose of Tom Waits wrapped up in I Am Frank which you can hear from the first track – Running Man – to the last – I Am Frank – but the sound of Frank From Blue Velvet is uniquely their own.
With the haunting guitar work and stripped bare vocal style of Andrew J. Davies complimented perfectly by the drum work of Ogs – who doesn’t play in the traditional sense of four to the floor, but rather fills in the space within the music – and the subtle bass playing and contrasting backing vocals of Ruby Lyons, I Am Frank comes across as a soundtrack for a movie that you have never seen, but one that is on a continual loop in your head.
Frank From Blue Velvet seem to live by the motif that less is more and yet somehow manage to deliver an album that seems grand in scope and execution. It washes over you like a cold ocean on a stormy day, as you step into the water, leaving your clothes and possessions on the beach and swim off towards the horizon.
I’ve always believed the best music paints pictures in the listeners mind and speaks to their soul, and I Am Frank by Frank From Blue Velvet does just that. Admittedly, the pictures that fall from my brain are all dark and tragic ones, but I prefer my art to walk the seedier side of life.
This is Bukowski, drunk in his own personal hell. This is Kerouac, amphetamine tearing through his heart as he tries to thumb another ride. This is Hunter S. Thompson realising his mind has gone and taking Hemingway’s route out of town. This is me when the world comes crashing down around my ears and, laughing like a maniac, I flip it the finger, light a cigarette, and crack open another beer.
This is a proper record and one I doubt that I will ever tire of.
You can buy I Am Frank by Frank From Blue Velvet here.
RATING: 4.5 OUT OF 5
RATING SYSTEM:
- 0: Fucking Shit
- 1: Shit
- 2: Not Bad Shit
- 3: Pretty Good Shit
- 4: Amazing Fucking Shit
- 5: The Best Shit You Will Ever Hear
PRESS SOURCE: James Sherry/Division Media.
