The best rock 'n' roll relies on anticipation as much as arrival—a lesson The Frames' singer-songwriter Glen Hansard seems determined to test. The 12 songs on The Frames' latest, Burn The Maps, simmer for a long time before they boil, but they do heat up eventually, and that potential energy makes the Dublin band more than just another group of Coldplay-era atmospheric balladeers. (That and the fact that The Frames predates Coldplay by roughly a decade.) Hansard's first incarnation of the band had more in common with the Pixies and U2, but over the years, he's decided he'd rather light a slow-burning fuse than stick around for the explosion.
Burn The Maps begins with the hushed hum of "Happy," as Hansard half-whispers a statement of modern alienation, culminating in the line "Why are you building divides", which could be directed at God, a lover, or a political party. The song gets louder, but rather than cutting loose, it just keeps building, adding more guitar, more piano, and finally a wash of strings. The escalating drumbeat and harder-edged guitar of the next song, "Finally," promises some release, but its chorus gets softer instead of louder. The Frames' tense vamping doesn't begin to crest until the bridge, though again, it never really breaks. Throughout the record—on the dynamic "Dream Awake," the low, snaky "Sideways Down," and the quietly panicky epic "Keepsake," among others—The Frames changes tempo, volume, and tone, but at the point where most bands chase patterns to their conclusion, or let out a triumphant power-riff, Hansard and company just downshift and start over.
Some of these exercises in frustration are simply frustrating, but for the most part, The Frames' perverse restraint matches Hansard's lyrics, which are all about lowered expectations. Even when the song "Fake" follows a conventional rock structure, its big, pounding chorus proves to be a letdown after the amiably poky singsong that precedes it. As an experiment in defying formal expectations, Burn The Maps demonstrates how a climax delayed can be a climax extended.