Hello guys! How are you doing? Today, as I had
mentioned before, I’ve decided to do something different, and review one of The
Fray’s albums!
I’ve reviewed albums before in other of my blogs, but
never reviewed any here, and, it’s something I felt like a must.
The album I’ve chosen is my favorite The Fray album so
far: ‘The Fray’. I love all their albums, but I have an especial love for this
one. I find it very hard to choose among The Fray albums, and, ‘How to Save a
Life’ is very close to this one in my favorite The Fray albums list.
The sophomore album ‘The Fray’ was released in 2009,
and mostly recorded in 2008. It was produced by Aaron Johnson and Mike Flynn,
who had already produced The Fray’s first album ‘How to Save a Life’ (this one
I’m talking about is their second one). The album was released with the record
label “epic records”.
Since this is a blog about The Fray, I won’t stop much
to talk about the band. They’re an alternative rock band from the U.S., and the
band is currently formed by Isaac Slade (piano, vocals), Joe King (guitar,
vocals), Dave Welsh (guitar) and Ben Wysocki (drums). And, the band was formed
in 2002.
The album contains ten tracks, and three of its songs
have music videos: “You Found Me”, “Never Say Never” and “Syndicate”. The music
genre of the album is a piano rock/alternative rock style of music. The album
has a different lyrical content than the first one, although both albums are
similar in some ways. All the songs were written by Isaac Slade and Joe King, except
“Say When” and “Happiness”, which were written by Isaac Slade. Also, the lead
singer in “Ungodly Hour” is Joe King instead of Isaac Slade.
Track by track:
- Syndicate: a piano driven track which turns out
alternative rock gives the album a pretty good start. This song is about life
and how sometimes it feels like we’ve lost it all, and it gives a message that
everything isn’t lost yet.
- Absolute: this is the most energetic song off the
album, and it’s electric guitar driven. This song is about a love relationship
which isn’t as it seems, and someone out of it notices that and wants to do
something about it.
- You Found Me: this song turns out to be a quieter
song than the other two ones, yet there are quieter songs in this album. I’ve
talked about the meaning behind this song in a post before, so I won’t say much
about this track. This song is about the lead singer of the band, Isaac Slade, a
tough time in his life and losing faith.
- Say When: it starts as a quiet song, with a low
singing and low instruments. But, as the song goes by, it changes as well. The track
is a love one, and a really interesting one though. It’s a whole story told in
five minutes. It also mentions war and nations. An amazing song with amazing
lyrics.
- Never Say Never: a pretty nice piano ballad, which
is the quietest one from the album so far. The lyrics are about Joe’s marriage and
how it was falling apart.
- Where the Story Ends: this song has an amazing
instrumental, and it’s based on the piano as well. It’s about Isaac’s relationship
with his current wife in the beginning, and how both were feeling like
strangers.
- Enough for Now: this track has got a style similar
that ‘Where the Story Ends’. The lyrics are very different though. They’re
about Isaac’s mother and how his father didn’t show her how he loved her.
- Ungodly Hour: in this song we can find a very quiet
and low beat and instrumental. This track is about a love relationship going
through a hard time.
- We Build Then We Break: here we can find a different
beat and music style than in the rest of the album, with also “aggressive”
vocals coming from the singer. It seems to be about a person who’s hurt a
woman, and the singer is showing his position of support and is warning that person.
- Happiness: the album finished with an acoustic song
which consists of a guitar and the vocals in most of the song. The title says
what the song is about, and, in a personal level (talking about the band) Isaac
has said that it’s about his grandpa, but also about his wife.
This is the track by track. I haven’t said all I could
about each song at all, because, to go into deeper details, I prefer to write a
post about only the song. I’m planning to write more posts about the songs that
I haven’t yet.
This is my review of the album, I hope you liked it. It’d
me amazing if you shared with me your thoughts of the album and of my review! Thank
you so much for reading and stuff! Below I’m posting the video of the song “Syndicate”
for you to give it a listen:
