Label: Insideout Music
Release date: May 14, 2021
Production: Frost*
Album length: 53.16 min
Genre: Neo-Progressive Rock/Art Rock
Rating: 9.0/10
Frost* are a British art and neo-progressive rock outfit powered by three exceptional musicians. First up is Jem Godfrey, winner of the Ivor Novello award for best-selling single of 2006 for the song That’s My Goal, which served as the musical backdrop to The X Factor, the British TV talent battle. He’s also the man behind the hits of the pop band Atomic Kitten, as well as other pop icons (Paul Young, Holly Johnson and Tony Hadley, among others). In 2012 this same guy rescued a Joe Satriani tour by jumping in for a short spell on Mike Kenelly’s slot, and the same year he lent a hand on Steve Vai’s tour too. Then there’s the younger of the two Kings, Nathan (It Bites), who ‘rips’ the bass guitar in the footsteps of his famous brother Mark King. Mark shot to fame back in the eighties with the legendary art/pop sensation Level 42. The third member of the crew is the ‘omnipresent’ guitarist John Mitchell, who has been active on the scene for more than two decades and stands as one of the mighty cornerstones keeping the prog-rock pulse of Great Britain lively and kicking, even though, after its heyday in the seventies, the genre has completely ‘slid’ underground and become accessible only to those who, in 2021, are still lucky enough to explore music ‘with their own heads’. All three are also considered outstanding sound engineers and producers, on top of being excellent composers. Over the years Mitchell has grown into a very fine vocalist as well.
In short, nobody’s joking around with this trio. Once a quintet, now a trio. The band hasn’t released an album in five years. The answer is simple: everyone is too busy with a pile of different music projects, which makes “Day And Age” only the fourth Frost* album. Take Mitchell alone: in those five years he recorded and released albums with Kino and Arena, and above all threw himself into creative maneuvers around his new project The Lonely Robot. In that time he also launched his own record label, White Star Records. It focuses on finding prog-rock talents that keep popping up all over the British Isles, such as Kepler Ten, Kyros, or Voices From the Fuselage.
The trio decided not to have a permanent drummer in the lineup for the new album. So for “Day And Age” they teamed up with three phenomenal drummers who helped the trio out in the studio. Kaz Rodriguez (Chaka Khan, Josh Groban), Darby Todd (The Darkness, Martin Barre) and Pat Mastelotto (Mister Mister, King Crimson, Ork) are the names, and those names speak for themselves.
With “Day And Age”, Frost* have delivered what is surely their most mature studio achievement to date. They’ve always had a special appeal, and always an enticing one for music gourmets, but the fact that they keep ripening musically with age is confirmed especially forcefully by the past five years since their rather different predecessor, Godfrey’s personal, confessional concept album about the midlife crisis, “Falling Satellites” (2016). It’s crazy when you realize that “Day And Age” doesn’t need guitar solos, and it no longer reaches out “alternatively” now and then, like the previous two studio albums. Yes. With a name like John Mitchell attached, this album doesn’t need guitar solos. The opener, which is also the longest track on the album and the title track, doesn’t serve up a single solo in eleven minutes. Instead it offers an incredibly punchy hook driven by a phenomenal rhythmic drive that will win you over in an instant. It works like a radio-friendly hit, yet not one second of its gigantic 11 minutes gets boring. The tune turns on a dime. That cleverly executed main motif, which creeps right under your skin, returns in the closing part of Kill The Orchestra.
But let’s take it from the top. To paint the full picture, it’s worth mentioning the environment in which the album was recorded, and composed too. In January 2020 the trio headed into a studio set up in the coastal lighthouse in Dungeness, East Sussex. Smack in the middle of winter, when barely a ray of daylight ‘licks’ you each day, 30 feet from the sea, exposed to the howling wind, the crashing of giant waves, the crackling sparks of the nearby power station and the blinding beams of the lighthouse flashing. This is where the songs Terrestrial and Repeat To Fade were born, and given what I just described, Mitchell’s hysterical screaming into the mic in Repeat To Fade, ‘enjoy it, you wimps!!!’, comes as no surprise. The band didn’t just want to carry that moment over to the new album, they pretty much had to. That’s why the vibe of this record is at times darker. It’s no trouble for the Brits to conjure that element into their music, but with Frost* the gloom hits even harder this time. The result is brilliant all around.
The new Frost* album is decidedly ‘updated’. There are the talents, plus Mitchell’s incredible involvement in The Lonely Robot over just a few years, which carries plenty of compositional and energetic vibe over to the new Frost* album. It’s exactly this activity that keeps the musician in excellent songwriting shape. “Day And Age” also features a strongly present, obvious aesthetic production flirtation with the rhetoric of eighties new wave/synth sound, which fits the connection with a new generational wave, such as the current work of Kyros. I’m thinking especially of the new Frost* track The Boy Who Stood Still, where the new Frost* even evoke the spirit of mid-eighties Rush. In short, a very colorful, dynamic album stuffed with a predatory atmosphere that effortlessly calls up and creates mystique and melancholy. It’s an exceptionally polished art rock album that feels cohesive in its confessional spirit and works like a coherent bomb of energy, grabbing you with an emphatic pomp-drama theatrics. The contrasts between the building blocks of the sound are craftily intensified, and the sonic nature of the record shines in an achieved three-dimensional ‘ventilation’ (breathing). The musical landscape of the album’s sound culture is fully exploited and filled. It’s an album you simply surrender to, and it takes you, carries you, leads you. This kind of artistry of unique value also runs through the albums of the bands and projects It Bites, Kino and the already mentioned The Lonely Robot. That last observation isn’t even surprising. It was quietly expected.
Just like the title says. Day and age. Maturity comes with the years, lit up in a day that brings a unique moment of wonderful contemplation and magical perception from three ‘musical conductors’. Fans of the band and of all the artists mentioned in this review will be charmed without any further ‘blabbering’.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Day And Age
2. Terrestrial
3. Waiting For The Lie
4. The Boy Who Stood Still
5. Island Life
6. Skywards
7. Kill The Orchestra
8. Repeat To Fade
Line-up:
John Mitchell – vocals, guitar
Jem Godfrey – keyboards
Nathan King – bass guitar
Guest musicians:
Pat Mastelotto – drums
Kaz Rodriguez – drums
Darby Todd – drums
