Frog Eyes Albums (5)
'Tears of the Valedictorian'
Release Date 5/1/2007
Tracks 9
Label Absolutely Kosher
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What The Critics Say
Now four albums in, Northwest Canada-based, Dante's Inferno outfitters Frog Eyes seem less like a band and more like a movement. While the quartet's intentions are suspect, one listen to Tears of the Valedictorian confirms the group's uncanny talent for creating manic, beautiful, and upsetting songs that seem to exist wholly for themselves. Trying to pull any meaning from Carey Mercer's pulpit-pounding rants is a course in futility ("When you bottom the boats/the weeds deign to sigh/but the admiral's chicken/the general's chicken/how painful they rise"), but his conviction is so intense that it both captivates and worries the listener, much like a cogent, holy spirit-possessed homeless person challenging passerby with Bible passages laced with profanity. Musically, the band continues to push the envelope of pop music by speeding it up, chopping it into bite-size psychedelic pieces, feeding it back to themselves, then throwing it up through your speakers. A truly keen sense of melody keeps their twitchy, angular armaments from flying out the window, especially on the gorgeous "Stockades," the Joe Meek-inspired "Idle Songs," and the epic "Bushels," a mammoth piece of work that stomps around in a fit, continuously changing course and descending into a mad scat section that dissipates into an oddly endearing mantra of self-awareness ("I was a singer and I sang in your home"). Indeed. ~ James Christopher Monger, All Music Guide
'Future Is Inter-Disciplinary or Not at All'
Release Date 5/16/2006
Tracks 8
Label Acuarela (Red100)
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'The Bloody Hand'
Release Date 4/18/2006
Tracks 21
Label Absolutely Kosher
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What The Critics Say
Frog Eyes' 2002 debut catches the volatile British Columbian art rock quartet in the violent spasms of birth. With typically verbose and image-laden titles like "Fox Speaks to His Wife Who Is Not Quite Sure," "Silence But for the Gentle Tinkling of the Flowing Creek," and "Mayor Laments the Failures of His Many Townfolk," The Bloody Hand listens like a Kafka novel, peppering its tormented characters with arrows against a backdrop that feels more like a fevered nightmare than a cohesive narrative. Vocalist/guitar player Carey Mercer's Lux Interior meets Birthday Party-era Nick Cave vocals match the audio scenery like a corpse at a murder scene, and the group's complex noise rock arrangements constantly reveal themselves to be obsessively orchestrated marvels of terror, but there's so much volatility happening that the overall feeling is one of complete and utter suffocation. Listeners looking to add a few tracks to their road-trip playlists will find nothing but evil within this Bloody Hand, but those who find themselves aching to be butchered alive on-stage at an early-'90s lo-fi Skinny Puppy concert will rejoice in the heart-bursting onslaught. [The 2006 reissue includes nine bonus tracks.] ~ James Christopher Monger, All Music Guide
'The Folded Palm'
Release Date 9/14/2004
Tracks 13
Label Absolutely Kosher
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What The Critics Say
A poetry slam for the criminally insane, Frog Eyes' Folded Palm is as unsettling as it is riveting. The Canadian quartet has succeeded in creating a sound so volatile that the very act of listening to it is exhausting. Carey Mercer projectile vomits lyrics like "Oh I will scorn the dark opinions of British children" like vintage Lux Interior, blending cuss-filled rants about "fu*king the son" with ruminations on everything from the human heart to matrimony-seeking sea captains like a Shakespearian lackey in a postapocalyptic Globe Theatre. What's remarkable about all of this oratory fire is the melodic beast that's behind it. Melanie Campbell, Grayson Walker, and Michael Rak's nuanced playing keeps Folded Palm grounded in as much reality as they can muster, relying on complex arrangements that alternately ignite and help reign in Mercer's violent exorcisms. On the electrifying opener, "The Fence Feels Its Post," Mercer lets loose a torrent of hyperbole over a sped-up dirge that creaks like Tom Waits and snaps like Tender Prey-era Nick Cave. The piano-led "Ship Destroyer" dances around on hot coals, serving as a jittery primer for the record's finest offering, the frantic and purely psychedelic "Oscillator's Hum." A post-Nuggets-style gem that sounds like the Monks and Roky Erickson combined, its only moment of musical calm is whisked away by its choking narrator explaining, "It's a pity your baby died/but I don't do drugs." What makes Folded Palm so electric -- besides the mesmerizing and volatile playing -- is that the listener is well aware that Mercer could completely lose his sh*t at any moment, and the fact that even the band doesn't know when it's going to happen makes it all the more intoxicating. ~ James Christopher Monger, All Music Guide
'The Golden River'
Release Date 7/1/2003
Tracks 11
Label Animal World
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What The Critics Say
If David Lynch had written a Motown ballad during the filming of Dune, it probably would have sounded a lot like "One in Six Children Will Flee in Boats," the leadoff track on British Columbia's Frog Eyes' sophomore effort, the unsettling, beautiful and difficult Golden River. Songwriter/mouthpiece Carey Mercer twists the forced imagery of Tom Waits into nightmarish, apocalyptic poetry that references beheaded Queens, lonely hunters and bleeding babies with a subdued, yet manic, energy that threatens to explode at any moment. Golden River suggests what would have happened had Eddie Vedder quit Pearl Jam directly after Ten, joined the circus at Coney Island and spent the next ten years perfecting -- with one near-fatal accident -- the art of sword swallowing. Whether he's wistful and hushed -- yet still prone to bursts of falsetto -- ("Latex Ice Age") or assuming the role of a croaking carny ("World's Greatest Concertos"), there's little doubt that Mercer is vehemently content with spending the album's entirety in one form of pain or another. This is garage rock for a Sergio Leone film, and while Melanie Campbell's whip-crack drumming may draw comparisons to Meg White, it's the "Astronomy Domine"-era Pink Floyd tapestry woven by keyboardist Grayson Walker and the springy leads of guitar player Michael Rak that put Golden River on the lost, ripped and burned portion of the rock & roll map. [Golden River was reissued in 2006 by Absolutley Kosher with twelve bonus tracks.] ~ James Christopher Monger, All Music Guide
