Frankel - Chatterbox

Frankel
Chatterbox

I nearly missed talking about the great Frankel EP out on Three Ring Records. I got this album late last year and had been listening to it for quite awhile. But the disc started to skip on me a bit so I got distracted and accidentally filed it away in the “done” pile.

Anyhow, when I found it the other day and put it on, I was reminded of the very first thing that I noticed on listening to the first track “Pass Out”. There is a “phone-off-the-hook” noise in the beginning of the song that ALWAYS gets me to look at my phone to see if I’ve left it off the cradle. This happened to me no less than 3 times. Funny how something like that sound is so universal that it affects everyone the same way.

Now, I was going to segue that thought into something about how this album is “universal” and “timeless” but I can’t quite seem to find the right transitions. Well, I DO think that a lot of people who dig quieter and mellow pop in the vein of Elliott Smith and Pedro the Lion will definitely like this album. Frankel mixes mostly quiet acoustic guitar with wonderful folk melodies, but there is an orchestration that reminds you of Smith and maybe also Wilco or Lambchop.

That first track as well as the next one,”Don’t Leave”, definitely does remind you of Elliott Smith filtered through The Field Mice and Tahiti 80.

“The Antidote” is my favorite track and sort of sounds like Ken Stringfellow singing on a Fountains of Wayne song. There’s that buzzy middle keyboard section in here that picks the mood up a bit and makes everything more bouncy. “Method Actor” starts off with much stranger background music, like one of the Sparklehorse B-Sides songs merged with an Air song.

“The Great Unknown”, while a bit cliched in its evoking of a”Kashmir-like” feeling in the strings at the beginning of the track, actually reminds me a lot of a Bill Santen track at times. “All Satellites” starts out as a dreamy quiet tune but quickly makes its shoegazing powers known with a requisite dreamy and droning guitar. This is just a 6 song EP, but the initial taste test is definitely a positive one. Looking forward to hearing any of Frankel’s new stuff…

Albums on Itunes

Chatterbox EP

Artist Website:

www.frankelmusic.com

by Palebear