| Biography
The Best of The Frank and Walters 2002 'It crawled from the south, six legs, ten strings, two brothers and one enormous racket. The Frank and Walters first made their intentions known roundabout Cork city, Ireland, taking their inspirations in part from the town's assorted weirdoes, cider-frenzied summers in the public parks and the classic sixties-pop their parents played them on primal, one-in-one record-players. Now, eleven years after their first national review in hot press magazine The Frank and Walters are the buzzed-up sound of tomorrow's chart show today, and they're dropping you a reminder of just how long, strange and damned good the entire trip has been. 13 tracks are gathered here from a career that’s been there, done that and repeatedly re-plugged the jukebox. But is it really ten years since the NME decided that 'this is not a song' was worthy of a front cover? And where have we been since then? For the record, literally, we line out as follows.... one truly bona fide chart-hit ['After All'], another that bizarrely got lost on its way ['This is Not a Song'] and a slew of nearly-weres and almost-there’s, like 'Underground', a zippy synth-pop postcard from the band's fourth LP 'Glass'. 'Tony Cochrane', a softly strummed poem to a home-town vagrant, rescued from the second major label album, 'The Grand Parade' and 'Plenty Times', the lead track on LP3, 'Beauty Becomes More Than Life' and proof [if proof were needed] that while bad hair and purple flares come and go with the weather, the best pop songs are born, not made. Four albums into their career and The Frank and Walters are still resolute. Still content to dispatch [ir]regular memos that forever stretch and pull singer Paul's upper registers. Happy to let the songs drive the wagons, happy that some things never change. No idle boasts and no hallelujahs, nothing to unduly trouble the chart-compilers. So, while you're waiting well into 2002 and The Frank and Walters just keep on keeping on. This is a historical graph, over 13 tunes, which tells you that, with pop music as with life, form is temporary and that quality is a constant. |
