Rising stars: The Frown get down to finding a groove

28 August 2015 - 10:39 By Sylvia McKeown

I'm famous in The Frown lore for being the first person to have told lead singer Eve Rakow that I didn't like her music. It was an awkward confrontation at Kitchner's Bar in Johannesburg, where she accosted me in the entranceway with a second-hand retelling of my indifference.Instead of denying it, I told her it was true. I didn't like her music. I thought she was trying to be too many things to too many people, and none of them was original or true to herself.I told her I looked forward to the day that she finally made her own sound.Fast forward some years, a few break- ups, a cellist and two albums later and you find a new kind of The Frown, stripped down yet essentially still dancey.The new album ,We Are Not Dead(WAND), has 13 tracks born of a two-year journey by Rakow and producer Nicholas Nesbitt (aka Glass Swan).At first they sat down and played around with some beats. Out of that Memory Foam, the third track on the album, came to life.They then set to work arduously to make great songs you can dance to and have been waiting for the right moment to unleash them on the world.Memory Foam is a bass y work of genius; Meanie is down-tempo heartache and the album's first single, Light People, builds into a beautifully produced moment of clarity.Rakow's voice manipulation works better in her more melodic moments full of sass . At other times her screechy elf voice annoys me, but not enough to kill any of the songs.It's her willingness to be vulnerable and draw from her emotional well that makes her a powerful performer, allowing her secret emotions to crash into the bassy synth beats."Make the sound commercial? That will never happen," explains Nesbitt. "We can't do it, it's impossible."I think Eve is also just not capable of it. She has a specific kind of sentiment that's more important than a specific sound."The title We Are Not Dead reflects The Frown's cockroach-like ability to survive an industry that's fraught with pressure to be commercial and with not enough support.Anyone that hears their new album will be grateful that their electro heart keeps beating.Catch The Frown at their Cape Town launch tonight at the KnexT Art Gallery. Tickets are limited...

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