For the love of all that’s good and proper, here come The Frames, again. From 1990 onwards, they were inspiring and annoying in equal measure. In the mid-2000s, Glen Hansard sidled off to work on his Swell Season music, after which he shifted gears once again with his solo work. And now, 25 years after they first formed, and looking ever so slightly greyer, they’re ready to grasp the nettle again.
Inevitably, things change across such a lengthy period of time. The fabric of relationships alters, for starters, and perhaps the reasons why a musician stays in music go through a process of deliberation. But here they are: two founding members, Glen Hansard and Colm Mac Con Iomaire, and Joe Doyle, who has been a member of the band since 1995.
We convene for a misty-eyed chat, not in the place The Frames forged its identity (the Ormond Multimedia Centre in Dublin is now the Morrison Hotel, which is far too expensive for a few coffees these days, especially when The Ticket is buying) but in the venue where the band began its slow but steady rise to national fame and no small notoriety: Whelan's.
Compilation
There is much to talk about. Not only will we traipse about and around the 25th birthday celebrations but we will also be discussing the forthcoming compilation album, Longitude (an Introduction to The Frames), which for the first time officially gathers together a collection of representative tracks, as well as one new song, None But I.
But first things first: The Frames as a band is 25 years old. Did they ever think in their wildest dreams think the unit, the name, the music, would last so long?
"Not at all," says Mac Con Iomaire. "How I would have been aware of something like a 25th-anniversary would have been watching the likes of The Dubliners being celebrated on The Late Late Show, so the same thing being about The Frames is absurd."
The road from then to now has been twisting and rock-strewn. When you’re younger, says Mac Con Iomaire you automatically trust people who are older. “You assume they know better than you do, but as the years advance that sense of trust wears off.
“That happened with The Frames, and with some of our business decisions it was a case of implicitly trusting people who had been hired to do a job because we thought they were the best people for it. Of course, it turned out that they might not have been.”
Magic
As if by magic, says Hansard, the band signed to a record label and secured a management deal. Immediately, things changed.
“Our audience was still there, but everything else slowed right down to a bare pulse – we realised that the industry, the management, the label, was actually getting in the way. We’ve always had a good relationship with our audience, we knew that we had an audience, and so we asked ourselves: what is the shortest distance between the band and the audience? And that is, literally, to get them involved.”
The audience, says Hansard (and Mac Con Iomaire and Doyle nod in unison) was always there for The Frames; through thick and thin, the fans lived for, with and through the music. All are in agreement that the band – through the 1990s and into the 2000s – engaged with their audience, and vice-versa, in a unique way. “Thank God, it’s the one thing we’ve always been able to count on, especially in Ireland.”
There seems to be a general consensus among the three long-term friends that the forthcoming compilation is no more and no less than a personal gathering of songs for casual consideration. The implication is that if you’re a fervent Frames fan looking for a breakdown of the band’s perceived “best” songs (or, God forbid, “greatest” hits), you might be disappointed. And neither, they say, is it a winding up of loose ends.
“It’s the mix tape that you can put together to give someone who isn’t particularly aware of everything we’ve done,” says Mac Con Iomaire.
“We’re proud of each track – you play old records of ours and there are highlights as well as songs you skip over. So the idea of gathering together tracks from all of the different decades, and putting something really quite beautiful together, was what got us all interested.”
Legacy
Is there no sense of gathering songs together as a legacy?
All three shake their heads. “We’ve left out obvious contenders,” says Hansard, “but we all had to feel that the songs chosen were definitely those we wanted on the album. We’ve hit on something that we’re all happy with. Similar to Colm’s attitude, for me it’s a mix tape. Of course, if in six months time we were to sit down and choose again, then the track listing could change. But I think this is certainly a good picture of where we’ve been thus far.
“I don’t feel like anything is over, or that it’s the final chapter. It doesn’t feel like that to me at all.”
“I suppose it’s unusual that we’ve been together so long that we haven’t released a best-of until now,” says Mac Con Iomaire. “It was far more interesting for us to be in the position of showcasing songs that we felt might be overlooked. And by virtue of the album being an overview of 25 years of The Frames, it’s a good opportunity to do it.
“Beyond that, as I’ve said, it’s a chance to give new fans of The Frames a decent introduction to what it is we did and do. And by virtue of it being a low-key release, there’s no anticipation, either. It’s just – here it is, we hope you like it.”
Hansard agrees. “That’s why putting out this compilation has been really enjoyable, because there has been no pressure for us to be delivering, as such.”
As any avid Frames fan knows, it is almost 10 years since the band's previous studio album, The Cost. (Some songs from that album found their way on to Hansard's and Marketa Irglova's Swell Season debut album, and by extension the soundtrack to Once, which was directed by a former Frames member John Carney.) Is there any reason to think the band might consider writing, recording and releasing new material beyond the album's new track, None But I?
“Anything is possible,” says Doyle, trying to be enigmatic but falling short in the nicest way possible.
“We got together recently in Grouse Lodge and did a little recording,” says Hansard, “and that was really enjoyable and easy. For us all, it needs to feel like it’s natural, and that it’s about the music, and not about something else.”
Watch this space.
The Frames play the Iveagh Gardens, Dublin, on July 4th and 5th; and Live at the Marquee, Cork on July 11th. Longitude (an Introduction to The Frames) is released on June 26th
