Track Listing

1. Commemorative T-Shirt
2. Unfamiliar
3. Trail of Fire
4. Savant
5. Only Twin
6. Old Friend of the Christies
7. Sleeping Dogs and Dead Lions
8. Frame
9. Voorhees

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24065 in Music
• Released on: 2007-10-02
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Import

Customer Reviews

A beautiful journey
At the beginning of 2007 I first heard about Oceansize when listening to songs on the internet radio site Pandora - Homage to a Shame came on and I knew I had to get something by this band. Their cds are rather difficult to come by in the States, so I had to purchase Everyone Into Position from iTunes - I fell in love with the band almost instantly.

Fast forward to now, after many repeated listens to Frames. At first, I didn't think it was as good as EIP - but now it's all I've been listening to. The songs on this album are incredibly subtle, much more so than in the past. 90% of this album is in odd meters or is polyrhythmic, yet I wasn't aware of that at first listen because of this subtlety. One of the things that make this band so great in today's music world is that they take the complexity of so called progressive rock, but only use it to serve the compositions and not their own instrumental showboating.

The spectrum of emotions running through this music is vast and deep. Songs on this album go in all directions, yet each is completely distinct from one another. Commemorative 9/11 T Shirt features a hypnotizing and somewhat minimalistic piano/guitar riff that builds into a fantastic climax, a style of songwriting that Oceansize has perfected on this record. Unfamiliar is probably the most active song aside from Sleeping Dogs - its main riff could be described as a cry of desperation. Trail of Fire is my current personal favorite of the group, with its beautiful, ethereal opening swirl of notes. This track is truly moving to listen to, especially when it reaches the end.

Savant is a serene landscape, reminiscent of Music for a Nurse from the previous album. The lyrics are especially notable: "where others float, you and I crash land." A string section ends the song, making it stand out even more. Only Twin is rhythmically among the most difficult of all Oceansize songs - a rhodes piano lays down a pattern in 3/4, but at a key point in the lyrics the band comes in in 5/8. Later in the song, vocals build to an emotional climax. An Old Friend of the Christy's is quite a different song for them, a sort of post-doom funeral dirge. Again, the band take their time in building on the same theme, but this approach definitely works - this song's grief is unrelenting.

The last two tracks are somewhat of a juxtaposition, proving Oceansize's musical and emotional versatility. Sleeping Dogs and Dead Lions is absolutely vicious. Its highly Meshuggah-influenced opening riff is the most ear-catching moment on the record, along with the piercing vocals. The song breaks down into a Disco Volante-era Mr. Bungle style section with strange guitar/vocal unisons, and really goes out with a bang - fans of A Homage to a Shame from their last album will really find something to love in this song. Lastly, the beautiful The Frame is the Ornament/Last Wrongs of the album, closing the entire work on a decidedly positive note. Its serene and patient solo guitar opening sound post-rock, yet this song does not proceed with the self-importance and unnecessary "noodling" that plagues so much of that genre.

As you can tell, I really can't say enough about this album. The emotions present here go through desperation, anger, determination, grief, hope, and acceptance. If you are going through a hard time in your life, no matter what it is, I think that this album can help you get through it - it's working for me. I can't find anything on it that I dislike.

Oceansize fans, if you don't have this yet, buy it before you buy anything else - even your groceries.

Newcomers, you'll want this, but you might want to get Everyone Into Position first, as it's more accessible at first than this album. But, if you're a patient and appreciative listener, this might just be the purchase for you.

Oceansize is one of the most promising bands in today's musical landscape. All of the members possess high technical ability on their instruments, but only use it sparingly and selectively. Their compositions are infinitely more thoughtful than most of their contemporaries, using subtlety and emotion instead of blazing solos and instrumental feats. Hopefully they will enjoy a great amount of success so we can continue to hear these wonderful new sounds.

One frame too many
Many say an artist's third album will either make or break them and basically decide their longevity. Well step up to the plate......Oceansize with their 3rd album `Frames'. With a line up change due to personal circumstances which saw Steven Hodson coming in as the new bassist; I expected `Frames' to unlock a new door in terms of the direction of their sound and it certainly did.

My first impression of Frames was that it was heavier than its predecessors. However after further inspection it became apparent that it is both their heaviest and their mellowest. They have basically taken their sound spectrum and stretched both extremes even further. This is no more apparent than in the track entitled, "Sleeping Dogs and Dead Lions", which is probably one of the heaviest tracks they have ever done and certainly heading into metal in places, the intro in particular reminds me of The Deftones. Then right next door to this track you have album closer `The Frame' which is your slow moving epic in the same vein as "Ornament/Last Wrongs" from `Everything into Position'. They are completely different songs but both achieve the same thing which is a great and fitting climax to their respective albums. The beauty of `The Frame' lies in the simple build up; starting off with a slow a gentle guitar riff and gradually all the other instruments come in one by one. Then Mike Vennart's voice enters with "I can hold you all together". It's such a relaxing while epic song, never in a rush, letting their sound expand till eventually it bursts with a crashing climax.

The best song on the album for me is `Unfamiliar'. It took me a while to realise that `Unfamiliar' was a song in its own right because of the seamless link from the first track `Commemorative 9/11 T-Shirt', I thought it was part of that song until I looked down at my MP3 player when it clicked. Its starts off easy, then it's as if the song swaggers into bar, knowing every other song is looking at it, thinking I wish I was that good. My favourite bit in particular is the very last quiet/loud part where Mike Vennart sings "And all who sail in her" then really explodes into "Saw the seashore, unfamiliar". A great song and one I would definitely recommend if you want to get pumped up for the day.

On the other hand, the worst song on the album is "bonus" track `Voorhees'. I put the inverted commas round "bonus", because I feel this song ruins the album. The main thing I have got against this song is that it feels so disjointed, as if it is two different songs glued together. It is not a bad song apart from that, but at the same time compared to the rest of the songs on the album I feel it is somewhat sub standard in comparison. Not only this but "The Frame" is for me is the natural album closer and that is how it should finish! A twenty second gap does not make me think "ahhhh that's the end of the album.........oh wait there's a bonus track". Instead, it makes me think that after `The Frame" has finished, "that's it, what a finish to an album.....then there's more". It's like when your up for a promotion you deserve to get and you've done everything right then all of a sudden just when the finishing line is in sight you somehow manage to talk yourself out of it. This is exactly what effect `Voorhees' has on the album.

One of the reasons I feel the bonus track may have been included is to give the fan `Value for money' by filling the CD which comes in at staggering 77 minutes and 41 seconds. The irony of it is if this was indeed the approach is that if the bonus track was taken out, the CD would still have been 67 minutes long which is still twice as long as your average album. Anyway, on a more positive note, the lengths of the songs are one thing I love about Oceansize, while many bands have songs 3 minutes long. In your average Oceansize song, the song is probably still not reached the chorus in that time. There is never a rush, as the let their ideas flourish and expand naturally as opposed to forced and condensed into 3 minutes. Nothing shows this more than the fact the shortest song on the album `Unfamiliar' is 6 minutes and 29 seconds. To make this into a single they had to edit over 2 minutes out of the song!

Overall listening to `Frames' feels like within each song you're going on a journey through different countries and cultures; all within the world of Oceansize. From post rock to epic rock ballads, from metal to Indie rock, it's like a genre hopping extravaganza mastering each impeccably. What excites me about this band even more is a feel there are vast territories with in the world of Oceansize which are still lay undiscovered, even to the band themselves. This is not one of those albums that you will listen to for a month move on to the next band. This album is a slow burner and one which will be on my CD player for many months probably years to come.

Worthy of their name
Amazing Album - if you truely love music, buy this album.

This is quite possibly the best album I have bought in some time. Unlike so many bands, Oceansize have not let the walls of the commercial music box confine them. Rather, they have created music as music should be. An expression - whether that be of emotion, musical/technical ability and knowledge or whatever.... just not a product to feed the mindless masses.

Oceansize are one of the few bands I have heard in the last few years that are trying something truely fresh. Why stick to 4/4 timing? Why not make a song go for as long needed to build suspense, amplifying the tremendous climaxes?

The daunting minimalized first 5 minutes of "Only Twin" are almost spine-chilling. Then the song erupts into a winding melody underpinned by a highly syncopated riff taking around 12 bars to repeat itself.

The drumming itself is a work of art in this album. Every stroke of Heron's sticks is planned, precise and appropriate - yet never coming across as boringly routine. The sheer complexity of their music, and thus Heron's drumming, could never allow it.