Frances is an indie band in its adolescence, a time when the questions that agitate commercial music are just beginning to churn.The band released its debut album, All the While, last October to critical acclaim from the indie-rock establishment. But despite opening a game at Shea Stadium and playing with mainstays like The Walkmen, Frances’ ping on Brooklyn radar is still pretty muted, and members find themselves dealing with strange new feelings about their potential, about the media and about those curious black sprouts of fame growing from their art. I first meet Frances at the band’s Greenpoint rehearsal room.The space is beautiful—chandelier, crimson walls—and the band is drunk. Forties and tallboys abound.
But, as members will often say, they're no garage band. Frontman Paul Hogan mentions a recent New Yorker article, and drummer Tlakael Esparza just happens to have the latest issue folded under one of his toms. “We’re a very erudite band,” says bassist Nick Anderson with an irony that, because he’s nevertheless telling the truth, falls flat.
Balance, or perhaps tension, is the word of the hour for Frances.This is a band that’s so far dwelling on the verge: between bands’ band and fans’ band, between composition and rock ’n’ roll, between private art and public notice. Hogan has a PhD in music comp from Columbia, and the arrangements he’s written for Frances have included strings, horns, glockenspiel, autoharp and, in one case, a high school marching band.Thus the press labels the music chamber pop, a designation the band accepts with trepidation.
I wander between performers as Frances rehearses. Even short its two female members—melodica player Stephanie Skaff and violinist/vocalist Julia Tepper—the band delivers a undoubtedly layered presentation, like the passing of near trees and far houses as you ride down the highway. One layer rollicks, another cruises and Hogan’s upbeat croon is a gentle enough guide through the orchestral thicket. They break, give each other feedback and we begin a discussion of the term “chamber pop.” Big deal that they deviate from a fourpiece setup, they say. It’s out of necessity, to get the “sound colors” that Hogan says he wants for the arrangements—not out of novelty.
“Animal Collective picks interesting instrumentation,” says Anderson, “and they’re not ‘chamber pop’ because they don’t pick violin.”
Adds Esparza: “It doesn’t describe the music at all: It describes the setup.” “It’s like saying, we use bass and drums, so we’re synth pop,” Anderson says. But, he adds, “I don’t think we really have a feeling on it. It’s like saying ‘trip-hop’ or—” “That’s your example?” inquires guitarist Brian Betancourt. “Trip-hop?”
The following night I meet Betancourt at a bubble teashop in Gowanus. He is a little guy with shruggy gestures, a savant of slow sarcasm. Nervous, he asks that we move our interview to a bar.Talking over drinks, he says, will “remove that barrier between what you want to say and what you say.”
What Betancourt wants to say, it turns out, has to do with his idea of Frances as a “slow burn” kind of band. From the beginning, he says, “I knew that it wasn’t as straightforward as the type of music that explodes on the blogs and drives the kids crazy.We definitely don’t have a gimmick. ... My friend and I were talking about this, and he said, ‘Some people sprint and then they stop, and other people jog and they can go forever.’”
The chamber-pop label could be seen as a gimmick, we figure, but too much debate on this and the counterpoints blend into indifference. Essentially, Betancourt sees Frances’ output as music for music lovers. He admires artists like Lambchop, whom he recently saw at Bowery Ballroom.The venue was only half full, he says, but everyone in attendance was a musician, and “everyone was just in love.” For Frances, likewise, fame and fans are so far only incidental to the music. As soon as the first album was released, Frances’s live set was half new material. And in what Hogan calls an “inter-band experiment,” for their own excitement, they plan to write and record an EP all in one day on Jan. 24.
Frances’s next album will be a more collaborative effort, with Hogan in a way coordinating the efforts of his band mates. Betancourt says he’s in a way glad that the band “doesn’t answer to a lot of people” yet, as there isn’t a specter of expectant fans eavesdropping on their composition. He’s eager for publicity—he did spend three hours at the Brooklyn Inn with me—but he’s content to let the band rise gradually.
“A slow-burn band is harder to pigeonhole,” he says, “but it’s… What’s the word? The music-writer word for an album that rewards repeated listens?” He searches the air, then turns to face me: “A grower.”
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Frances
Jan. 18, The Bell House, 149 7th St. (betw. 2nd & 3rd Aves.), Brooklyn, 718-643-6510; 7, $10
