For a World That Should Listen

Public relations people hope against hope to have their product hit the word-of-mouth circuit. Why? Because it works. Frente!, a hot young group from Australia, was thus sent my way by friend and regular contributor David Batstone who lived in community eight years ago with the now 20- year-old lead singer, Angie Hill. This is too good to be true, even for PR types. Thanks, David, for this early and hot tip.

Ah, To Be Young and Astute

Frente!’s Marvin the Album is an entertaining recording. Listeners likely first will notice Hill’s vocals, and that’s what might leave the longest impressions too. But there is much more to cull from this young band. Thoughtful, if sometimes cryptic, lyrics match Hill’s airy voice. Add in intentially lean instrumentation (demonstrating a surprising amount of confidence for a young band) and you have a recipe for success.

The recording opens with "Girl," an unpredictable anthem to the pressures of self-discovery. A gentle and memorable piano line supports Hill’s quiet insights. "A girl is a verb/a whirl of colour/In doing she’s being/she never thought she was thinking/anything you could."

"Labour of Love," the first song off the album to catch substantial airtime, tackles a theme reflected in many of the tunes—the challenge of being young and in love in the ’90s. We are all invited inside the intimate thoughts and fears of a lover who wants to trust. "Am I fooling you?/Do you fall for it/or do you just see right through?/Are you as cool as you believe?/Are you playing hard?/Are you waiting just to quietly clock my card?/Are you waiting for a moment to leave?"

Beatnik poetry (with all tunes written by band members, primarily singer Angie Hill and guitarist Simon Austin) combined with thinly produced tunes creates an energy that is compelling. Hill and Austin, when singing together, push this envelope to the max on two songs—"See/Believe" and "Cuscatlan." The former uses simple guitar and bass lines to set up the dialogue between these two; the latter uses a lonely trumpet descant to set up the power of the story they tell.

Uniquely direct, from "Cuscatlan":

I love my country
but it wears a uniform
it speaks with foreign guns
in the background you can almost hear
the sound of intervention

and I don’t know when liberty fell
but we rang every mission bell
we rang them loud and clearly
for a world that wouldn’t listen

I don’t want to die
I’m as innocent as anybody
I don’t even know how to spell revolutionary
jesus in the sky
the bullets in the guns
you don’t even know what we mean by repression...

and fatherland raped motherhood
and told her it was for the global good
and now we ring the mission bell
to warn their children

Hill’s voice is reminiscent of Suzanne Vega in places and Sinead O’Connor in others, though not as oblique or distant as either. In the pop offerings on this recording, especially "Accidently Kelly Street," her voice provides a bounce that makes the tunes irresistible. And Hill gives that little complement, that intangible extra, reminding me of early Paul McCartney songs.

The album is well-balanced, though a couple of second-side tunes do feel a bit like album fodder. Many of the songs have vaguely recognizable riffs, borrowed from other artists, but then what of rock and roll isn’t anymore?

This band is hot because it is artistically pleasing, offers creative images, and is a whole lot of fun. I have the feeling the young people in this band like what they are doing and each other. (They seem to be on tour for reasons other than simply the generation of money, unlike a number of other acts this summer.)

I challenge anyone who likes rock-and-roll music and enjoys a good time to dislike this recording.