FROG EYES - "TEARS OF THE VALEDICTORIAN"

Great

In the RKO film The Last Days of Pompeii, Marcus, a Roman blacksmith, becomes a gladiator in response to his wife’s death and as a result becomes callous and violent and selfish until he is called to protect his own peace-loving son amidst the eruption of Mount Vesuvius on Pompeii. Frog Eyes’ latest album “Tears of the Valedictorian” calls to mind the failures of men such as Marcus in equally Romantic settings with a sound that rivals a force of nature in its bombastic chaos and its ability to physically shake listeners. These songs are about primal fears, universal dreads, and they are bleak to the bone. Mercer’s lyrics question the efficacy of masculinity through tragic-Shakespearean characters who try and fail to be chivalric, strong, supportive, and protecting in the face of these obsessive terrors. He embodies each of these characters with his roaring washing machine caterwaul, which calls to mind a carnival barker or a brimstone preacher. As I mentioned in my previous review of the Frog Eyes live show, his voice can be very polarizing and yet on the album, he reigns in a lot of the time to a near whispered falsetto, calling attention to the gender expectations that he addresses, and at other times his voice is completely drowned in reverb and noise.

The sound of the album is equally romantic, dense, and caustic bringing together high modernism and baroque sensibilities into a messy lava flow of sound. Guitars tremor and buzz like swarms of bees or fire alarms while the boom crash percussion alternates ship bell banging with precise snare accents. Spencer Krug’s keyboard accoutrements fill in the silences or in grander moments wash over and pile on top of the amounting babel.

“Tears of the Valedictorian” can be overwhelming at times, especially on first listen, and it takes several attempts to dig through the layers to discover the core songs beneath the exquisite excess. In fact, I feel like Frog Eyes is at their best when they negotiate 60s pop chord changes and 70’s soul flourishes into the spackling of noise and make it their own as they did on Carey Mercer’s stunning contribution to the Swan Lake album “The Partisan But He’s Got to Know”. In songs from “Tears” like “Caravan Breakers, they prey on the weak and the old” ,“Reform the Countryside” , and “Evil Energy, the ill twin of” these music staples cut through in a guitar run or a doubled keyboard line or are called attention to with a hammering snare staccato and it feels like a real reward to hear them. After the first two tracks, the songs on “Tears” ebb and flow from quiet and confessional to roaring and expository every other track providing an experience not unlike that of taking a hot and cold shower.

I recommend this album to anyone willing to give it several listens and who is not completely alienated by Mercer’s singing style. Frog Eyes have come back like Vesuvius with “Tears of the Valedictorian” their best record since “The Folded Palm” and I am certain that it will only get better with subsequent listens.