A.OK BLOG

Last year one of my iPod staples was Wierd Records act Frank (Just Frank) — a synth/jangle rock duo from the French Riviera whose darkly echoey music is reminiscent of early REM and The Smiths. Although in the past few years 80s nostalgia has become something of a dead horse, Frank (Just Frank)’s excellent debut LP “The Brutal Wave” sounds like lost Murmur b-sides with Morrissey on vocals; spinning nostalgia on its head by, at times, doing 1983 better than the originals. Frank (Just Frank) was founded by high school friends and metal-heads Anthem and Kirti with the aim of injecting their black metal brutality into synths, drum machines, and jangly, elliptical guitar riffs. Taking the catch-all metal term for something good, “brutal” wave came to be both the name of FJF’s debut and an accurate tag for the music they created which lies somewhere between cold wave and new wave — dark, but still full of shimmeringly poptastic pay-offs. An instant dance floor hit at the Wierd Records party at Home Sweet Home, FJF quickly got signed to Wierd and became a cult favorite amongst the post-punk aficionados that flock to Wierd Wednesdays weekly. Although Kirti and Anthem are no longer making music together, Anthem recently relocated to New York to work on new FJF material and focus on his more metal-informed solo stuff which he debuted to the Weird crowd in January. OAKAZINE met up with Anthem and spoke about French music scenes, brutal wave, and being an American ex-pat in France. — Text by Marlo Kronberg. Photos by Jakob Axelman. Interview and video for “Die in Bed” after the jump.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 21st, 2011 at 5:50 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.