Drummers often get a bad rep in muso circles, but Mike Frank – hard-hitting powerhouse skin-basher with Arrows of Love, purveyors of angst-laden grunge-noise par excellence – has taken a long, bold step into the terrain of serious art and has produced a work that’s truly remarkable.
The tile suggests something warped, a la Mike Patton, but then for all his way-out tendencies, Patton himself is, in close listening, a remarkable musician, a true visionary with a sense of the epic. And so, it transpires, is Mike Frank.
‘This is going to get weird… I’m going to make this weird’ leans heavily toward the orchestral, the choral, the cinematic, the epic, with hints of JG Thirlwell’s more recent work. It’s subtle, understated, but high on drama. There are lengthy passages that build quiet, eerie tension as celestial voices rise to the heavens while almost subliminal basslines prowl and fear chords hang in the rarefied air. Dolorous bells knoll darkly.
‘I’m Going to Kill Myself’ find a strolling bassline and distant incidentals build around a dolorous, trudging drum beat. The quirky oompah of ‘Carnival’ provides some light around the mid-point, just when things threaten to get a bit heavy, and ‘When Your Heart Stops’ is a buoyant brass-soaked piece that stands as a 21st-century reimagining of ‘Tusk’ played through a filter of Tom Waits.
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In contrast, ‘Back Tracking’ breaks with some explosive drumming and atmosphere-building piano, and in contrast again, ‘Cello and Bas Piece’ is a stark, sonorous piece that straddles avant-garde and neoclassical. And why the hell not? For so long, musicians have been pigeonholed, confined to specific styles, and listeners have become increasingly lazy, narrow in terms of what they will listen to. No-one’s winning here.
‘This is going to get weird…’ is bold and ambitious: it’s also magnificently executed, and it’s clear a lot of consideration has gone into the running order and the album’s overall flow. It’s all part and parcel of a multi-faceted work that’s intelligent, articulate and, at times utterly astounding.
Mike Frank Online
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