Jem Godfrey | Spirit of Cecilia

Frost* is set to release their fifth studio album on October 18, Life In The Wires, which follows the excellent Day and Age of 2021. Once again, Jem Godfrey is the prime mover, this time handling all of the lead vocals in addition to keyboards and songwriting. John Mitchell returns on guitars, with Nathan King on bass and Craig Blundell on drums. There are nearly ninety(!) minutes of music here, and it is all terrific. Not a single moment is filler.

As Godfrey explains,

“It’s actually a sort of continuation from Day and Age. The first track on the new album starts with the end of the last track from that album “Repeat to Fade,” where the static comes up and a voice says “Can you hear me?” I remember putting that in when we did Day and Age as a possible little hook for the future; a character somewhere out there in Day and Age land trying to be heard. What does he want to say? Can anybody hear him? Day and Age kind of sets up the world that this character lives in and Life in the Wires tells his story”.

The album chronicles the adventures of a young man, Naio, who lives in the near future, in a world dominated by AI. One night, he hears a voice coming out of the static on an old AM radio asking, “Can you hear me?” From that initial contact, Naio goes on a quest to find out who is the person behind the Livewire radio broadcasts. Meanwhile, the AI that runs the world, “The All-Seeing Eye”, is on Naio’s trail, trying to prevent him from connecting with the mysterious man on the radio:

You wanna take me down for hearing voices on my radio
But I have seen your way of life and, thank you, I don’t want to know
You feed the people food and fear to keep them all compliant
But I won’t play your game so now you’ll fight to keep me silent

Interspersed between tracks are nuggets of speech from Livewire Radio broadcaster: “Hey, this is Livewire, voice of the free. And tonight we’re taking calls. Heh! I’m just kidding… Hahahaha!”

That’s the storyline, so what about the music? I have to say, I haven’t been this blown away by an album in years. Day and Age was my favorite album of 2021, and Life In The Wires is even better. Jem Godfrey is the master of crafting attractive and heartfelt songs, and every song on Life In The Wires delivers. Every style is visited here: ballads, straightforward rock, very heavy rock, and, of course, prog. I have listened to the entire album at least two dozen times, and I keep finding new things to delight in.

The boys of Frost* are a mean biker gang in their off-hours. Frost Band photo by Will Ireland

“Evaporator” is an extended, upbeat, almost funky tune with a nice 80s vibe. “Absent Friends” is a gorgeous and delicate piano-based ballad that reminds me of classic Aqualung (the group, not the Tull album). “School (Introducing the All Seeing Eye)” is a blistering instrumental where Mitchell shows off his chops.

Everything reaches a climax with the final three tracks, “Moral and Consequence”, “Life In The Wires (Part 2)”, and “Starting Fires”. “Moral and Consequence” has one of the most irresistible hooks I’ve ever heard. At the end of its more than 8 minutes, I was still begging for more, until the opening chords of “Life In The Wires (Part 2)”. This track is almost 16 minutes of near-perfect prog perfection. It calls to mind the best of Abacab – era Genesis, but, to my ears, it is better produced than that classic album. The closer, “Starting Fires” is simply beautiful – a somber and sweet melody sung to some spare musical backing. It seems as if Naio has connected with Livewire, and they are going to start a resistance to the Eye:

We’re making waves
We’re starting fires
We can’t go back
to Paradise

We’re starting fires
We’re starting fires
We’re starting fires
We’re starting fires

2024 is coming to close, and so far, Life In The Wires is the Album of the Year for me. We’ve been blessed with some great music this year, in particular The Bardic Depths album, What We Really Like In Stories, but my gosh, Frost* has put together an album for the ages.

Here is the official video for “Moral and Consequence”:

Album_Cover

Frost*’s upcoming album, Day and Age, showed up in the DropBox this past weekend, and considering their last one, Falling Satellites, was one of my top 5 of 2016, I immediately plugged it into the USB port of my home stereo. After eight consecutive listens and picking my jaw up off the floor, I have to state up front that Day and Age is Jem Godfrey, John Mitchell, and Nathan King’s finest achievement. Ever.

The album opens with the title track, and it is a galloping monster straight out of the gate. A young boy tells the listener to “enjoy yourselves, you scum!”, a relentless beat is established, and one of the most addictive keyboard/guitar riffs ever recorded takes charge. I think Frost* must have been listening to a lot of Synchronicity-era Police before writing this song, because it reminds me of that massive, tense, steamroller of a song, “Synchronicity II”. It is a masterpiece of controlled chaos that builds inexorably for nearly 12 minutes. There’s even a little ska-like section at the 5:33 mark that makes the Police invocation explicit. However, in a battle of the bands, Frost* would beat the pants off Messrs. Sumner, Copeland, and Summers. This is an incredible track, and after I heard it for the first time, I wondered if the rest of the album could possibly hit the high bar it set.

Frost*_Photo_2 — King, Godfrey, and Mitchell are Frosted*

I need not have worried, as every song on Day and Age is equally strong. There is not a single clunker on the album. I don’t what lit a fire under John Mitchell, but his vocals have never sounded more impassioned (and he’s sung quite a few songs with a lot of passion!). The core of the group is Jem Godfrey (keyboards, vocals), John Mitchell (guitars, bass, vocals), and Nathan King (bass, keyboards, vocals). They have enlisted the talents of three different drummers – Pat Mastelotto, Darby Todd, and Kaz Rodriguez – and each one provides perfect support depending on the needs of the song.

“Terrestrial” is the first single, and it is a great choice – melodic, energetic, and leaving the listener wanting more:

“Waiting for the Lie” is a keyboard-based ballad that provides a nice respite from the fast-paced previous tracks. It features a beautiful melody that is allowed to shine through a no-frills production. “The Boy Who Stood Still” is a spoken-word allegory about a boy who, you guessed it, stood still. So still, that he disappeared. The narrator tells the tale over an infectious bed of ’80s – era synths and skittering drums. It sounds weird, but it is oddly attractive.

“Island Life” begins with some waves on the beach as washes of synths and some arpeggiated guitar (there’s that classic Police vibe again!) as Mitchell sings of escaping a dreary life and “living in this island life”. “Skywards” is my second-favorite song (after the title track), with some especially beautiful chord progressions in the melody. You think you know where it’s going, and it takes an unexpected turn and ends up even better than you anticipated.

Wait, did I say “Skywards” was my second-favorite song? I actually meant “Killing the Orchestra”! An electric piano and delicate vocals introduce this one, and it gradually builds into a mini-symphony that includes Mitchell’s best guitar solo of the album. It is nine and half minutes of musical bliss that segues immediately into the closing track, “Repeat to Fade”, that reprises some of the themes from the title track. This is a terrifically dense and claustrophobic track that features Mitchell hollering, “Enjoy yourselves, you scum!” Sounds oppressive, I know, except that the melody is very uplifting and makes the dark atmosphere bearable.

Nathan King recalls the writing and recording of “Repeat to Fade”: “We were 30 feet by the sea, next to a nuclear power station and a lighthouse, in midwinter! …in my head you can absolutely hear the bleak isolated oppression having an effect on us.”

The recording conditions may not have been ideal, but Jem, Nathan, and John have managed to produce a pop/prog masterpiece of an album from them. I’ve listened to it a dozen times now, and I find new delights every time.

Day and Age will be released on May 14, 2021 on InsideOut Music. You can preorder it here: https://frost-band.lnk.to/DayAndAge

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