If passion guaranteed record sales, then The Frames would have a record in every home, but then, this band was never one to let reality interfere with the pursuit of dreaming at high volume. Their last album ‘Dance The Devil’ represented a quantum musical leap for the band, one that delighted their long term followers (it was voted best album of 1999 by the Hot Press Readers Poll), swayed the fence sitters and silenced the detractors.“That album was amazing for us to make," glen recalls. "We were a lot less precious, you actually find yourself sometimes wanting to take the microphones out into the street and record it while the cars were goin' by. I think home recording really tuns you on to all that, because your little brother calls you in the middle of it, or the phone rings and it's on the track, and you always end up loving that bit."“Mercury Rev meets dEUS meets Will Oldham in heaven. Only much better! Album of the year already!” (Melody Maker, June 99, UK)
Of course, it’s taken Glen Hansard and co. a while to get here, from the Nick Drake-meets-The-Pixies joyous noise of their 1992 debut ‘Another Love Song’ (Island), through the almost Zeppelin-esque plains of ‘Fitzcarraldo’ (ZTT/Elektra) three years later, to ‘Dance The Devil’ (ZTT/Universal) in 1999 - but at last, this is The Frames at their most evolved. The band may have spiritual comrades in arms, the likes of dEUS and The Dirty Three, and the new agenda also betrays a kinship with the finest of the US avant guitarde - acts like Grandaddy, Pavement and Will Oldham, not to mention the kind of brinkmanship one would associate with elder statesmen like Tom Waits or Neil Young, but in the end, The Frames are a quintet sounding like no one but themselves. Contrast the kaleidoscopic swirl of ‘God bless mom’ or the infectious ‘Pavement tune’ with the brooding title track, and witness a band who've at last harnessed the acclaimed kinetic energy of their live shows and converted it into recorded sound.
Earlier this year the band parted company with their record company, ZTT, and are currently enjoying their new found freedom. Since then the band has spent their time writing new material and working on the next album with Craig Ward (dEUS) co-producing, and are about to take a trip out to Chicago to do some further recording for this album with Steve Albini. Albini has always expressed a desire to record with the band, and now that they are free from record company constraints, it’s a dream that they will make happen themselves.As well as continuing to sell-out pretty much every gig they play in Ireland, The Frames have also been touring extensively in America and England and building up a committed following wherever they go.“The Frames are simply the most talented, exciting and entertaining band to come our way in many a moon; see them and see why.” (Flipside Magazine, UK) .
"What it is now is that we're all mates," Glen concludes. "When the band started it was me with a record deal and a bunch of songs and I needed someone to play on them, but that aesthetic is very different now. It's always been a long term thing with us. We just wanna make 20 records, getting better as they go along."