The Frames + For the Birds by Jim Carroll

Later this month, The Frames will perform For The Birds in full in Dublin to mark the 10th anniversary of the album’s release. It’s a prospect to whet the appetite because that record, more than anything else in the band’s canon, sums up how and why The Frames meant so much to so many people. It was a record born of hard luck stories and wrong turns, but it was the one which set them up for a run which went all the way on to Hansard winning his Academy Award in Los Angeles for ‘Falling Slowly’.The Frames are a band who have experienced a chequered history. From the very start, there was an inherent drama around them, with record label deals which never quite worked out to band members coming and going in the early days. Through it all, through all those slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, they had a fervent fanbase to will them on, a support which was there almost in spite of whatever fate threw their way. For most long-time Frames’ fans, For The Birds was the band repaying that trust. Sure, they had big tunes prior to this like ‘Revelate’ and the previous albums had some incandescent moments, but this was the one which caught the band’s ramshackle soul, shabby charms and ability to put across epic themes in a heartfelt way like never before. It was the beginning of a great leap forward.

Of course, being the Frames, this took more time and more dramas. For The Birds and the patronage of their Irish fanbase gave the band the largesse and probably encouragement to stay in battle in foreign fields. American and European tours saw them add to their fanbase. Anti Records came onboard to lend some organisational strength and stability. And then, former band member John Carney came along with the script to ‘Once’ and the rest is history.

Everything changed with For The Birds. It’s the sound of a band of friends turning a corner and realising that they’re in this for the long run. Full of understated beauty and magic, it still resonates with subtle grace and deepburning fervour. The songs are righteous, the tone is right, the playing is superb. There were some A-list production credits – namely Steve Albini and Craig Ward – but the heart and soul belongs to the Frames and the Frames alone. Such a display of emotion never grows old.