The Irish rock band The Frames hasn’t exactly mapped out a plan for world domination, but after a decade and a half of making consistently good and constantly evolving albums, one might expect they’d have found a bigger audience.
But for a band that remains as true to its music as The Frames – a process that has included some very public disputes with record labels over the years – success can’t be measured merely by album sales and packed arenas.
“You don’t realize (success) when you’ve got it,” bassist Joseph Doyle said in a recent phone interview from his studio in Ireland. “Over the years, we’ve set ourselves goals, realistic goals. One was we’d like to travel around the world and play to 1,000 people in every city we go to.
“But it’s more of a case of realizing when you’ve made progress or got to the place where you were trying to get to a few years ago. What we’ve got going is really good.”
What they’ve got going is a sixth studio album, “The Cost,” which was released in the United States in February and is receiving wide praise as the album that could launch the band to a new level. The band brings the first part of its U.S. tour to The Showbox in Seattle on Wednesday.
“It’s not that we lack ambition,” Doyle said. “I think we’re just wary of it. As people, self-promoting is not something that comes to us really freely. Maybe it’s an Irish thing that we can’t go out and tell the world how brilliant we are.
“We’re not going to chase it. Sometimes when you set out to try to have a No. 1 record, what happens is you fail and end up realizing that you don’t even like the music you’ve made because you were only making it to be No. 1.”
The band, known for its energetic live show, took that approach into the studio to record “The Cost.” It was done in 10 days without much editing and dubbing.
“I think we were more inspired by just the idea of trying to create something that was fairly live,” Doyle said. “We were inspired by something that was more of an old-school recording style. We were trying to capture a certain feeling, trying to get that little bit of magic that sort of disappears when you start editing songs and all the bits are recorded separately.”
And now comes the chance to get in front of their fans and surprise them with what Doyle admits is a minimally rehearsed show, although it generally includes some fan-favorite moments that include occasionally dropping in bits of other songs, such as Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” or “Pure Imagination” from “Willy Wonka &the Chocolate Factory.”
“Those are just little in-jokes for ourselves or people that are really into our band and they just kinda stuck around,” Doyle said. “Some nights, we’ll stick in lots of little bits. We have to keep ourselves interested and excited about doing it, and those little bits are one of the things that keep us on our toes.”
Reporter Victor Balta: vbalta@heraldnet.com.
Big Hassle Publicity photo
The Frames are (from left) drummer Johnny Boyle, violinist and keyboardist Colm Mac Con Iomaire, singer Glen Hansard, bassist Joseph Doyle and guitarist Rob Bochnik. They perform Wednesday in Seattle.
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