For two people in a city of eight million, Frog garnered a respectable New York following in their early years. But the Queens alt-country duo found fandom—real fandom, where people queue to buy your music and the faces in the front row aren’t your longtime friends—overseas. Audio Antihero, a British boutique label that signed the band after discovering their 2013 debut record, boosted Frog enough to warrant a full-fledged UK tour before they ever plotted a regional U.S. leg.
Since then, Frog have spent the past decade enjoying life as a cult favorite. When not going for $250 on the resale market, their records draw comparisons to Townes Van Zandt and Silver Jews—fitting, as the late David Berman once wrote Frog a letter of admiration—while smudging the edges of barren indie rock, low-key emo, and hearty Americana. In the lead-up to Grog, the band’s fifth album and first in four years, their situation changed. Singer-guitarist Daniel Bateman moved to New Rochelle and welcomed twins, while longtime drummer-bassist Tom White moved to England and was replaced by Daniel’s brother Steve Bateman. The new album kicks off the band’s fraternal era, but Frog’s sound remains as squirrelly as ever.
Sounding as if they were still holed up in their parents’ garage playing for nobody but themselves, Daniel and Steve Bateman are all unbridled inspiration and freeform spontaneity, be it the last-minute glockenspiel in “Ur Still Mine” or the spectral piano haunting “Goes w/o Saying.” Their comfort with one another is audible. Daniel namedrops Butthole Surfers and Metro-North tickets with the tongue-in-cheek tone of someone fluent in the shared language of a sibling canon. When he opts for a more straightforward approach in “DOOM SONG,” a slog of discordant chords and ominous cymbal crashes, Daniel encourages his brother to cut loose: “Take pride, young bro/You should sing as in a dream/Stop the show, break a string.”
Daniel’s emotional delivery has always been one of Frog’s strongest assets, and that still holds true with Grog. On “Maybelline,” he sings about a Dexedrine-dosed woman in a car crash like he’s pouring one out for someone he’s known all his life. He injects “New Ro,” an ode to his new hometown, with vocal harmonies to match the retro romance of his banjo plucks. As if the simplicity of how he sings the love song “So Twisted Fate” wasn’t enough, it evolves into a voice note of his children attempting to sing while a synth chord morphs into focus. There’s no exact science to Daniel’s singing, but his untrained voice has a purity that’s difficult to fake and moving to hear.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
