Search - Frog Eyes :: The Golden River

Please buy this album!

07/28/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"(i'm actually 29). please buy this album. yes, there IS hope for rock. it's right here. right in front of us. this is gorgeous, beautiful, perfected music that only frog eyes knows how to play. the band is a complete original. frog eyes along with animal collective gave me hope that new GOOD, nay PERFECT pop songs can be written without any obvious influences(people who say they sound like tom waits.. are you kidding?). there is just no comparison or let up on this album. it is perfectly executed by the canada foursome and is very pleasing to the ear while always having a feeling of 'off-kilter' careening melodies that always resolve themselves into a distinctive melancholy/exstatic state and leave you with no option but to push the repeat button. original, experimental, an excellent album to first experience the frog eyes' skewed perspective of music. five stars for all three of their full-length albums.

if you are out there and feel crushed by the ennui of the current pop(and even indie) releases these days, you owe it to yourself to listen to these guys and gain some much needed hope for the future of music. peace."

Whoa!

pataphysismo | Arlington, VA United States | 02/24/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This seems redundant, but just wanted to add to the chorus of amazed praise for this album. Full of contrasts that aren't really contrasts: mostly gorgeous, yet in constant danger of completely falling apart.....filled with all sorts of melodic and lyrical hooks that stick in the mind like the catchiest choruses or the most uplifting bridges in the best of mainstream music, yet impressionistically loose in structure and lyrically surreal (not shallow surreality, but the good sort in which nonsense and vulgarity are stitched together in all their combinations under the guise of tradition in order to provoke deep emotion and thought; just the fact that the lyrics are sung with such conviction almost forces them into meaningfulness). In this sense, the Bowie comparisons, while apt, should be clarified, particularly given Bowie's chameleonic musical and vocal forms. "Golden River" is like taking Bowie's most powerful moments and stretching them to their full possibilities (although this is not say that "Golden River" could be confused with a Bowie record--I'm just trying to give you something to grasp onto, and Bowie's a good/well-known touchstone). More specifically, pretty much the entirety of this record sounds like the following: imagine the "whoosh!" moment in any of Bowie's best pop/rock hybrids when the music has reached its delirious peak of simultaneous beauty and kickassedness and you feel like you just jumped off the cliffs of Dover (maybe think of "Life on Mars" right as the chorus is kicking in; I've never been to Dover, but similes are regional animals and should be left unmolested)...then add several more instruments/effects, but not enough to sound like distorted crap (props to whoever produced "Golden River," by the way).....then imagine Bowie's voice pouring into the mix, only a lot deeper and huskier (hence the Tom Waits--EARLY Tom Waits--comparisons), and not quite altogether there in a tranquilized sort of way, with the occasional high, crazy (but not annoying) tangent, all sounding prophetic and, again, utterly convinced. Bowie fans might consider all of this sacrilege, and Bowie-haters might be saying "ugh, why would I want to buy a 2003 wannabe version of 1970s-era Bowie." To the Bowie fans I say: I challenge you to listen to this record and tell me with a straight face that it doesn't rival Bowie's best in terms of power, scary beauty, and successful experimentalism. To the Bowie haters I say: you won't find the things you hate about Bowie here--Frog Eyes is something else entirely, a new, pretty much unclassifiable creature on the landscape. Now, of course, I feel a little weird basing my whole review on Bowie, so please discount it all--if you're a fan of amazing, visionary, horizon-stretching music, buy "Golden River.""

Notice to buyers: the tracklisting above is wrong

M. Hall | Cairo, Egypt | 12/07/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The album is great, but a heads up to buyers: the tracklisting above is incorrect. The album has 11 tracks, begins with "One in Six Children Will Flee in Boats" and ends with "The Secret Map Flees from Plurality".



I tried to figure out what album is being listed, but the hilarious titles are all too generic to decipher.



Word up."