Unlike most bands, The Fray's greatest flaw is widely known: The group works with a serious lack of variety. This seems to have been the most recurring criticism of the group's debut album, How to Save a Life, and it is again the biggest problem on the band's self-titled sophomore effort.
The Fray should have been a redefining album for a band with some promise, but instead it plays as another humdrum collection of bittersweet anthems. There is practically no thematic contrast between The Fray and How to Save a Life.
This is perhaps no more evident than in the first single, "You Found Me" - a track built on formula.
Just like previous Fray singles, it starts with a piano intro quickly followed by electric guitar riffs and drums that wind up to anthem-like choruses always marked by cymbal crashes. At some point, the song works its way to a climax, breaks down to just piano and vocals and then hits the final chorus with even more melancholic vigor.
In fact, this is pretty much the formula for the entire album, give or take a few details. The songs aren't bad - in fact, the band is pretty talented at laying down intricate melodies and constructing catchy riffs. But the group's elaborate anthems lose context amid predictability and monotony, and eventually the entire album becomes tiresome.
And it isn't just the physical sound that seems mechanical. The Fray also employs the same themes and lyrical style as How to Save a Life. Lead singer Isaac Slade is still crooning about longing and friendship in the same breathy vocals and melancholic tone. When he sings, "Lost and insecure/ You found me/ You found me," he might as well be singing, "Everyone knows I'm in/ Over my head/ Over my head," or any other vague go-to phrase from a sorrowful list. It really doesn't make a difference.
Perhaps it's because The Fray simply cannot strike up a tone other than bittersweet. Even the album's final song, ironically titled "Happiness," is melancholy. Slade sings, "Happiness feels a lot like sorrow/ Let it be, you can't make it come or go/ But you are gone, not for good, but for now/ And gone for now feels a lot like gone for good." Some happiness.
So The Fray has made very little progress since its debut, but this isn't the real tragedy. No, the problem comes in the lack of deviation from form throughout the album, save for a few rare moments.
In the slow, swinging "Ungodly Hour," The Fray abandons its obsession with the sensational and creates a beautifully bare and honest song. Slade even loses his breathy whine for clear vocals, while drums roll smoothly in the background and the guitar lightly plucks out riffs. The song never builds and feels more natural than any of the album's previous power anthems. The effect is mesmerizing and reveals a band with a great potential for songwriting.
But this realization just makes the album's failure even more evident.
It really is hard to blame The Fray, though. The band has found its winning combination, which may be enough to capture American airwaves for a time - but it's not enough to sustain a full-length record.
2.5/5 Stars
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