With their upcoming double album, Life in the Wires, ringing in my ears, I recently sat down to talk with Frost* conceptualist/keyboardist/vocalist/grinning mastermind Jem Godfrey. Impishly humorous and thoughtfully reflective in turn, he was more than ready to talk about how the new album came to be, where it sits in the grand tradition of prog concept albums, what each band member contributes, the chances of touring behind this record, and possibilities for Frost*’s future. Video of our chat is below, with a full transcript following.
First of all, congratulations on the new album, Life in the Wires! It’s been three years since the last one by Frost*. And the first thing I was curious about was, what was the journey between the last one and this one? How did Day and Age perhaps lay the groundwork for this album?
Weirdly, it created a world, a sort of cinematic universe that the new album is set in. When John and I were writing Day and Age – I didn’t realize this at the time, but I think quite visually in terms of music. I’ve started to realize that when I’m writing songs, I can kind of see the world that these people are in. The Day and Age world was quite cinematic; to me it felt very cinematic with these different places, and the album cover being quite iconic with the five megaphone-holding gentlemen, and the world it was in! It felt quite cinematic. And so, at the end of Day and Age, there’s a little bit at the end of the song “Repeat to Fade” where the song fades out and is replaced by static. And there’s just a voice in the static that says, “Can you hear me?” Which is how the new album starts.
I quite liked that; I put it in at the end of Day and Age thinking it might be nice to have a little hook. It’s almost like the sort of thing where they say, “James Bond will return.” I quite liked that sort of idea.
In my head, it’s set in the same world, like the video game Grand Theft Auto, where you used to be able to be in one city driving around and doing stuff. But if you wanted to, you could just jump in a car and drive across the bridge to another city, and there’d be another world going on there. It felt a bit like that to me, the Day and Age world and the Life in the Wires world are the same world. But things are happening concurrently. So while in Day and Age-land we’ve got the characters, like in “Terrestrial” and “The Boy Who Stood Still”, these characters similarly over here there’s the character in Life in the Wires and that’s happening there at the same time. I quite liked the idea that it’s all set in the same universe. And so, as a result of that, visually and musically, it was quite easy to set a house style, in that respect.
Ah! OK, that makes sense. Was that part of the emphasis behind making it a double album as well?
Not really; I think that the story of Life in the Wires, there was enough of a story to tell that it felt like a double album would do it justice. Cause there’s nothing worse than a prog band – I’m saying this hopefully – there’s nothing worse than being judged as a prog band that’s waffling on. We’ve always thought that we had enough to say within the confines of a 60-minute CD format previously.
But with this one I very much had a mind, I wanted to do vinyl, as in, it’s four sides of vinyl. And as a result, each bit of vinyl, the constraint’s about 20 minutes [a side] for optimum audio quality. What’s nice about that it is gave me some parameters to work in. And weirdly, when you say 86 minutes that seems like a very long time. But if you say four 20-minute sides of vinyl, in my head it doesn’t feel anywhere near as daunting.
The double album idea, we’d always wanted to do one, I’d always wanted to do one. This just felt like the right time to do that fabulous prog cliché of the double vinyl album!
Four sides kind of gives you a structure like a movie structure to play with.
Exactly! You introduce the characters in the first half, the first act – there you go, that’s the word! And then the journey happens over the next phase, which is Act Two. And then you have the third act, where it’s all concluded and the fable is told, the lessons are learned, or whatever. So yeah, it had enough material, musically, for it to extend over those sorts of formats. And because I was thinking of it in longer bits of music like 20 minutes – they’re not all 20 minutes long, but all the songs are connected. So they’re sort of like a suite of songs.
And so naturally with that, the feeling is “well, the songs need to be more progressive; there needs to be more of a journey.” Like The Wall is a continuous thing and The Lamb, is quite a lot of it linked.
It just felt like that right, natural thing to do. I think if I gone into it thinking, “I’m making a CD,” it would have been different. But my mind said it was four sides of vinyl and it seemed – I don’t know, it seemed perfectly natural this time around.
And that seems to be a shift that’s happened across the music industry. You can tell that things are being planned more for sides of an LP, if you will, than a single CD. It certainly covers a lot of ground; I had the chance to listen to it this week, and there’s a lot of sonic difference and variation, and there’s quite a bit of thematic ground that it covers as well. But you also mentioned, in the press release, that there are deliberate nods to the back catalog; Milliontown was mentioned in the press release. What kind of facets of your previous albums did you want to bring forward? And were there any particular reasons for that?
There is [laughs] – I was thinking about this earlier. I went on a nice long walk; it’s this beautiful autumn day, and I was thinking about it. The push/pull for me is that I sort of know why, but what I don’t necessarily want to do at this point is talk too much about it. Because I don’t want it to be too defined – it sounds like a strange thing to say. If I say, “well, this is because of that”, everyone’s gonna go ,“Oh, well, fine, I won’t bother!” I think at this point, there’s quite a lot I’d like to leave up to people’s imaginations and interpretations.
I know why it is, and the reason is tied up in the name of the character, but apart from that it’s open to interpretation. In my head, I have a reason why it is. I will explain it, but maybe not yet.
Yeah, I understand the need to avoid spoilers at this point!
[Laughs] Yes, exactly.
But I did notice that this time around, there’s more – we Americans would call them 16th notes; I believe you call them semiquavers – involved than there were on Day and Age.
Mainly [drummer] Darby Todd was the purveyor of 16th notes and 32nd notes on Day and Age. Yes, with Day and Age we made a conscious decision to not do too much widdle, you know? We wanted to pull back from that a bit. Because there’s obviously a danger; you can drown in a sea of hemi-demi-semiquavers [64th notes]. What we decided on that one is to do arrangements.
But then what I realized is that in the gap between Falling Satellites and this album is, I think, eight years? A decade is quite a long time to ask your fanbase to put up with you not doing one of the things they enjoy you doing! Again, also because the album is more progressive in its demeanor and arrangement, it seemed sensible for us to not have any rules this time. So, we can play and we can do a bit of soloing; we can be a bit cleverer. Also, as you’ve said, it covers many, many different moods and atmospheres. And as a result of that, if you take away the ability to solo or to express yourself in musical terms instrumentally, you are over the course of 86 minutes making it more difficult for yourself. I think one of the things that we all enjoy about this genre and musicians in it is when they can cut loose with a bit of this [mimes guitar shredding]. It seemed fair to have a bit of light and shade, to allow that in the band; so we’ve all had a little moment when we allow ourselves to let go a bit. I hope it’s tasteful! I hope it’s tasteful! [Laughs]
Well, sometimes bad taste is the best taste, but …
Exactly. Well, look at my dress sense! Exactly. [Both laugh]
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