Frankie Rose

We're very excited to have Californian alt-pop powerhouse FRANKIE ROSE at The Brudenell this December, playing in support of the recently released Herein Wild.

Herein Wild sounds so far away from itself. I dont just mean in terms of production, although Frankie Rose has certainly kept up her flair for the spacious on her third album. I mean that it aligns itself with disparate themes and desires without working to create interesting tension between them. The album picks up on the orchestral threads that lay scattered inside her last albums tapestry, but doesnt let go of Roses punk roots. It wants to sneak over to a darker, more confessional space, but lingers inside Roses bubblegum sensibilities. On her Fat Possum debut, Frankie Rose starts to articulate new musical instincts, but doesnt muscle up to realize them in full.

The weirdos on this album are my favorites, and I would just love to do a complete, long, weird album thats not just pop songs at some point, said Rose in a recent interview with Pitchfork. Shes been taking in movie soundtracks, she said, dancing around the idea of making affective music thats stranger, more instrumental, less pinned to pop structure. If I went off and made some musical or soundtrack, nobody would be psyched. Even if thats my wildest fantasy, I still have to make pop music, she said.

That sense of duty to accessible melody and recognizable structure comes through on most songs on Herein Wild. You for Me starts with a bleed of synth and a garage rock punch that nods to Roses beginnings as a drummer for the rose-tinted pop punk outfits Dum Dum Girls, Crystal Stilts, and Vivian Girls. If Interstellar flirted with the danger of losing sight of the ground forever, this opening track bolts itself right back down to earth.

The rhythm section that runs through Herein Wild still owes itself to The Cureor maybe to DIIV, or Beach House, or any other band thats owed its palette to The Cure and Cocteau Twins recently. The dusty bass, wide drums, and thin synths that make up Roses primary colors feel like part of a nostalgic moment thats stuck around past its welcome. Roses airy voice and knack for crafting lead melodies let Herein Wild wash down easy, but its an automatic, familiar kind of easy. It sounds like shes happily sliding into the template of the moment without considering how to mutate it.

Songs like Sorrow weave darker lyrics into bubbly retro-pop, but the tension between content and form feels accidental, or maybe just inevitable. It doesnt sound like Rose ever made the decision to start crafting acid lullabies, to hide her dark parts inside a sunny veneer. It sounds like she let her subject matter drift while sticking to the mode of songwriting in which shes grown most comfortable.

But the albums best moments point to where Rose would be heading if she didnt have to make pop. Street Dreams finishes its spooky post-punk stomp with a colorful instrumental ditty that seems to dredge up muck from Tangerine Dreams tar pits. Cliffs As High illustrates a recurring nightmare of falling off the edge of a cliff over strings, piano, and glockenspiel, making good use of the Lynchian trick of pushing past maudlin signifiers to an eerie, uncomfortable space.

Album closer Requiem takes a disarming look at a lonely future, at the prospect of dying alone: When I am old, Ill be alone again and soon/ Listening to my own voice by the sea/ Ill be okay, Ive killed those demons anyway/ And its so far away. Roses voice floats above deep strums of acoustic guitar and the occasional horn flourish. Theres so much space in the echoes of the song that it feels like shes already perched at the edge of the sea, at the edge of her life. Im afraid hell and heaven are the same, Rose sings. In the end things fall apart. Its not a bitter finish, just a quiet resignation. It straddles the line Herein Wild wants to straddle perfectly.