Jamie and I have spent years corresponding about music and whatever else we feel like. By a totally random twist of fate, we had some IRL connections and juuuuust missed hanging out with each other IRL before they moved, alas, to Florida. But it’s not all bad! Through Jamie’s perseverance, Audio Antihero has released some of the most exciting indie rock and pop this side of Williamsburg’s gentrification — and with the release of frog’s latest album last week, the little label that could proves it’s not out of the game. frog has been around for a while — I would know, because I’ve been around for a while and keep writing about them. So Jamie helpfully put together a listening guide to anyone who’s new to the band.
“Frog” (2013)
Redundantly, it all started here. I first had the opportunity to hear Frog when I wrote for Scotland’s Gold Flake Paint. I don’t think it’s wild to suggest that GFP founder Tom Johnson has been one of the more pivotal characters in Frog’s story. His words in GFP and Drowned in Sound created interest where there hadn’t been before. I recall there being a possibility that I was going to review this album before Tom took it on himself. And thank fuck that he did. Tom’s writing is better than mine in ways I can’t even quantify. Frog would not have gotten those immortal pull quotes from “Jamie Hallaman” let me tell you.
Beyond being self-titled, Frog has all the key qualities of a great debut record: it’s unpredictable, and it overflows with ideas to the point of mismatching. Frog offered so much here: “Ichabod Crane” is hard to even follow before you’re weeping to a song about a figure skater.
My personal favourite, “Rubbernecking,” activates something ugly and primal in the dark heart of man. The song evokes a lot of the silent desperation prevalent in the Garth Ennis era of “The Punisher.” When Bateman says “Last night I fucking killed a man, and you know? It didn’t change shit.” I hear it, and I feel it, but bitch, I would kill him again.
For me, “Rubbernecking” was the fucking song. For others, it was “Arkansas,” and certainly for a bunch of people it was “Nancy Kerrigan.” Then there’s “Jesus Song” which is lunacy, and that shit rules too, on top of that, “Space Jam” goes beyond eight glorious minutes. I think by a lot of us, the album’s “Nowhere Band” closer was just received as fun flirty “goodnight and, all the best,” but for others, it was the best thing on the album. That’s what a special thing this first record was, it overflowed with ideas, influences, sounds, and styles.
Some years later, after “Kind of Blah” came out, we reissued this on a very cute green cassette. I wanted to do it partly because things were going well, and this was an opportunity to share these lesser-known songs with a bigger audience while giving KoB another push, and partly because I’m a jealous bitch who wants to claim some kind of ownership over all the things I love. I think it worked out fine though. We got some nice reviews, and it was played on BBC Scotland a bit.
“Kind of Blah” (2015)
Audio Antihero is probably, simultaneously, the best and worst thing I’ve ever done. Other than in my closest perpetually imperfect relationships, this label is the most significant impact I have had on the lives of others. At times that impact has been negligible, and at other times, it has been big but brief. I think if you talk to a lot of artists or labels on the independent level, there can be a kind of post-release depression that comes when the music you’ve spent months working on kind of just gets swallowed up by the next wave of new releases. You can spend forever on mixes and mastering and design and do all the interviews and guest mixes in the world, but within a week or two, it often feels like none of it ever happened. It’s nobody’s fault, there’s pressure on everyone, including the consumer, to keep up and move on to the next thing.
With “Kind of Blah” though, I feel I was instrumental in helping to preserve and promote something that has continued to reach new people. I’ve had to brag about Frog numbers a lot over the last couple of weeks (coming back after such a long break, it seemed like one of the few ways to try and convince new people at press and radio to take a scrappy DIY release like this seriously) but it’s pretty embarrassing, and I honestly kind of hate doing it. All the same, that “Judy Garland,” a song from this album, would get more than 3.5 million streams on Spotify is something that I could have never even have conceived of before it happened.
I don’t mean to say that “Kind of Blah” is “Rumors” or “Tapestry” popular, but it was a pretty big deal for Audio Antihero and it has been really beneficial to Frog. That KoB continues to find new fans is something I’m so grateful for–it’s really all you can ask for. On some level, reaching people is why everyone starts doing this nonsense, and it feels great on day one but it’s often even more gratifying in years two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and so on.
As is a common anecdote for almost any album I’ve worked on, I was burnt out and preparing to close Audio Antihero down when Frog sent me KoB. Benjamin Shaw, the label’s ride-or-die (and frequent designer for Frog’s artwork from this album onwards), told me he would “duff me up” if I didn’t release it. That was the enabling I was absolutely seeking, so Audio Antihero lived to fight another day.
I was hooked on this the second I heard “All Dogs Go To Heaven,” a song that still overwhelms my senses. It makes me laugh a little now because there’s a line in it: “It shines from a time when the waitresses were fine, and their great big bosoms bulged through their ‘Hi, I’m Jamie!’ signs.” This is very funny to me now for my own weird gender dysphoria reasons.
We went kind of door-to-door promoting this album, and we did really well: the vinyl sold out, and we charted on Bandcamp for a while. You only ever get back a fraction of what you pitch for so you’re never satisfied, but Frog reached more people than they ever had before. I used to refer to “breaking even” as “going indie platinum” and we certainly did that, despite being the most expensive release in the label’s history.
Through sites like Gold Flake Paint, The Line of Best Fit, Artrocker, God Is In The TV, Louder Than War, Clash Magazine, and a pretty okay amount of BBC airplay, Frog picked up a bunch of new fans in the UK (and beyond). A few months later, it was enough to justify a tour of England and Scotland, which later became the “Kings of Blah” documentary. Unfortunately for me, I’d already made the move to America shortly before they landed in Gatwick, but it was still just such a fun time trying to line up shows, interviews, and, radio sessions, before hearing about the great response they were getting in both my home country and that of my parents (my mum was a Weegie and my dad is a Doonhamer). As much as Frog make music for themselves, and I release music I want to release, it just feels so good when people actually like it.
I think this is a genuinely great album, not everything on it is for everyone, but songs like “Photograph,” “Catchyalater,” “Irish Goodbye” and “(Kings of Blah)” are all different kinds of electrifying, and “Judy Garland” is as close to a hit single as Audio Antihero will ever have.
I recently had to leave New York, I’d been there since 2017 and I’ve been mourning it ever since. But as I wandered around the world’s greatest city for the last time, I made sure to listen to this album: “The City is a womb of brown brick beds of clay…”
“Kind of Blah” means a lot to me. I have the LP cover tattooed on my silly forearm. I found out from Twitter recently that I’m not the only one.
“Whatever We Probably Already Had It” (2018)
Recently referred to by Bateman as “the emo record” (in an interview with Tasteful Dissonance), this one rules.
Essentially six songs with a bit of bonus banter, I’m not sure it was the follow-up to “Kind of Blah” that people had necessarily expected or wanted but it was an incredible catharsis for those who had been attending Frog shows for the last four years and hearing these played live.
Songs like “American” and “God Once Loved A Woman” had been staples of their shows for so long. “Bones” in particular was a song that the old heads had been pining for. Then there was “Don’t Tell Me Where You’re Going,” which turned out to be a way bigger hint towards the future of Frog’s sound than anyone probably guessed at the time.
There’s something very retro about this odd collection that taps into a nostalgic and very specific feeling of discovery. Whenever you get into a band from the late 80s or early 90s, there are usually bizarre EPs and mini-albums scattered around the discography. Often out-of-print or missing from official discographies, sometimes now just bundled onto an expanded edition of a classic album, indistinguishable from the original pressing’s tracklist to new listeners. Often, these things would be a stopgap, a style experiment, a tentpole event cash-grab, or something to sell on tour. Sometimes, they were really pretty great. “Whatever We Probably Already Had It” was a little bit of all of these.
It’s not like EPs are uncommon now, a lot of people are pivoting in and out of different mediums as music consumption continues to shift, but Frog’s music never feels on-trend. They’re not a Sub Pop throwback band either though, Frog don’t sound dated, moreso they sound like something timeless that you’d somehow missed. There are Frog songs that could have been written in many cities, in many scenes, in many decades, but for me, it comes with that “lost album” feeling of a Comus, a Ned Doheny, or a Beverly Glenn-Copeland where something escapes recognition until it doesn’t. Once you’ve found it, it won’t sound like today’s top 40, but it will sound good as hell.
In a sense that actually may be what happened next. Although some Audio Antihero albums have sold quite well those audiences haven’t really transferred to streaming. Frog became the bewildering exception when directly after the 2018 record, which had a modest amount of luck with playlists, Spotify’s algorithm and editorial suddenly began pushing a large number of people toward the 2015 album. Though WWPAHI isn’t one of the best-known Frog releases today, it very much did its job by giving Frog an avenue of discovery that they continue to benefit from.
It is telling of the complexity of Frog’s path that this mini-album, which in its form resembles those forgotten EPs of yesteryear, was actually their first release since 2015. More complex still, this would be Tom White’s departure from the band as responsibilities and international relocation pulled him away from what had always been a duo.
“Count Bateman” (2019)
Technically only Frog’s second full-length album, “Count Bateman” was essentially a solo record from Daniel Bateman. Tom’s departure left Bateman to battle with stubborn drum machines on live shows, which he recalls yielding mixed results. But he sounds beyond comfortable here, and “Hartsdale Hotbox” feels like a real opening statement of this self-assurance.
Now the “The Count,” Frog moved deeper into an acoustic Americana style. This influence had always been there, as an element or in bursts, but now it dominated. Of course, being a Frog album, it wasn’t all one thing: “Black Friday” echoes The Cure’s “Close to Me” while “Taste” is full of dissonant angst, and “You Know I’m Down” is a stoned delight.
Another interesting song is “Borned King.” The unambiguously synthetic beat is wholly at odds with the serene layers of folky strumming…and then Bateman starts speaking into the microphone like he thinks he’s fucking Sade. What a lad. The best.
While reflecting on the making of “GROG” in a largely maniacal interview with Firebird Magazine, Bateman said: “For Kind of Blah, there was a New York setting and for Count Bateman, I feel like that was Los Angeles but not real Los Angeles, like a fake one in my head, like the Eagles.”
This sonic dream of 1970s LA was unlikely to be the Frog album that some fans had wanted, but it also seems to have been instrumental in reshaping what audiences would or could expect from Frog in the future. CB established that there was no Frog blueprint to be followed, but despite the shifts in lineup and sound, it was as distinctly Frog as anything that had come before it.
Frog’s audience has continued to grow through Spotify, allowing them to reach more and more young people. As a result, CB has become increasingly popular. “You Know I’m Down” in particular has become a minor phenomenon by amassing well over a million streams while still popping up on college radio.
It was in this period that Steve Bateman joined his older brother on drums for live events, bringing Frog back to a duo. The siblings had so much fun together that this became a permanent arrangement with Steve only now referred to as a “real member” of the band (you don’t have to pick your words too carefully when you’re brothers, I guess).
CB hinted at a new era for Frog. After the long gaps that interrupted their output, issuing a full-length album within nine months of their previous release was a remarkable turnaround. It now seemed possible that Bateman would soon be spitting out songs as fast as he could sing them. For as long as I’ve known him, he has always had “another album ready to go.” But a whole lot would change for him in the months that followed. He and his wife Kelly had two beautiful children, and his job situation exploded in a good way (he is very, very busy). So it took more than four years for us to again see the return of Frog.
It would be fascinating to know where Frog would be in a different era where interest equated to sales and sales equated to money. Failing that, it would be interesting to see what was possible for them through a real label with proper infrastructure. There has always been an interest in the band that goes beyond what is standard for their distribution, live schedule, and release regularity. If the budget and foundations were there, I really wonder what we could see from a Frog that has the freedom to make towns, rehearse and record without the limitations of a poorly paying music industry, employer-tied health insurance, and dogshit American paid time-off.
From my own side, Audio Antihero had probably more than one foot in the grave when CB came about. I think things ended up going pretty, but as a label, I absolutely wasn’t what I used to be. Having started out with Nosferatu D2 in 2009, this label was finally largely inactive soon after CB’s release. It was “GROG” that got one grudging foot out of the Audio Antihero grave.
So much has changed since Audio Antihero and Frog last released a record, a lot of sites are gone, and a lot of people are burned out or have moved on to new hobbies and/or real responsibilities. For numerous reasons, I have been totally disconnected from music, and have been playing catch-up day and night for a pretty last-minute release date. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in the process, surely more than I even know, but it feels good to do all this again. I feel motivated and excited in a way that I thought I never would again.
I’m glad Frog is still here (with Tom now back on bass for live shows even!), I’m glad Adobe & Teardrops is still here and I’m glad some version of Audio Antihero is still able to do this. Frog mean a lot to me and in 2023 they seem to mean more to more people than ever before.
I’d like to end this wee look back with a very nice quote from Thomas Spooner’s delightful review of GROG:
“So, here we are, a writer who couldn’t make it pay, writing about a label that couldn’t make it pay, putting out an album by a band that couldn’t really make it pay; a passion-project triumvirate doing what they can.”
We’re doing what we can and it all means something to somebody. Thank you if that’s you.
“GROG” is out now as a collaboration between Audio Antihero and Bateman’s Tapewormies: