Track Listing

1. In the Deep Shade
2. Lay Me Down
3. What Happens When the Heart Just Stops
4. Headlong
5. Fighting on the Stairs
6. Giving Me Wings
7. Early Bird
8. Friends and Foe
9. Santa Maria
10. Disappointed
11. Mighty Sword

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19932 in Music
• Released on: 2001-10-23
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

Amazon.com
Few albums are rich enough with a sense of place that they transport you to a different landscape. Engineered by famed producer Steve Albini, the Frames' fourth full-length release, For the Birds, is such an album. But instead of dropping you in Ireland, the band's home, or in any other physical location, For the Birds lures the listener to an interior terrain both familiar and remote. Without a single throwaway track, this album deftly escapes pathos, despite its focus on clichéd indie-pop themes of heartache and loss. A slow pulse-like bass line, rueful violin, mesmerizing guitar, and precise percussion underscore but never underplay Glen Hansard's stripped-bare vocals and lyrics. Hansard asks, "So what happens when the heart just stops / Stops caring for anyone?" He answers, "The hollow in your chest dries up / And you stop believing," a response dispelled as too facile by subsequent tracks. "Headlong" and "Santa Maria" nosedive into torment while "Early Bird," "Fighting on the Stairs," and "Friends and Foe" pull out. You're left in the middle of a swirl of conflicted emotions. What's remarkable is that For the Birds, rife with mental rifts and ditches, somehow convinces you that you want to stay there. --Cintra Pollack

Customer Reviews

This Album will repay your curiosity.
Having never heard of this band, and buying this album on the back of hearing a snippet of "lay me down" (the single from the album) I had reason to be concerned for the [money]I shelled out.

Yet this album repayed me in full, and will do the same for all who buy. Swinging from melancholy to cheery folk (Irish folk it seems) the tunes are meticulously created and yet the themes and emotion of the lyrics are not lost in the production. I guess its polished and raw all in one. Curious aren't you.

Many of the songs have a relationship-theme base to them, but they are still beautiful, and all unique. "What Happens when the heart just stops" and "disappointed" are the real heartbreak anthems, while "early bird" will catch you immediately, as will the occasionally-played-on-radio ticket "lay me down".

A mature and praiseworthy effort by a band that (as i only found out recently) has been together for some time. Buy it.

album of the year 2001 -no question.
the frames are a best-kept-secret type of band. your friend lends you one of their albums, you wonder why you've never heard of them before, and you go to see a gig. usually, at the point where you've been to the gig, you realise, whoaaaa.... believe me, this is not some dull-indie-rock-experience, that you have to pretend you orgasmed at, just to keep your underground credibility: this is the real 'it'.
'for the birds' is the high point in a series of albums that didn't look like they could be surpassed. each song is remarkable. this is one of those rare albums that don't leave you occasionally motioning towards the 'skip' button. the sheer craft and tension and balance of everything in it, renders it one of those simply as-close-to-perfect experiences. from the tenderness of 'what happens when the heart just stops', to the edginess of 'early bird', or the bruised tone of 'friends and foe', to the slow-building dynamics of 'santa maria', this album is singularly capable of articulating every emotion, with just the right mixture of truth, reality and dreaming.
in short, when you buy this album, you're not (just) doing the band a favour, and you're not choosing something on mere grounds of it being underground: instead, you're making a decision that will give you something to REALLY listen to, and in a weird way, these songs will almost listen back.

awesome
When I first heard of The Frames, I was lucky enough to see them live last year opening for Damien Rice in Portland. And I was floored when the first song they played was "Friends and Foes." The power that song had still stays with me. Now one year later, and three albums of theirs later, they are still one of my favorite bands, and I was able to see them perform again almost exactly a year later. If you don't have this album, go get it! The vocals are great, the music is wonderful.