The Fray Is Back
The Fray is a band of my high school and university years. The band’s biggest album, How to Save a Life, is an objective stand out, but their eponymously titled follow-up “The Fray” is the one that I still play today.
The first time that I heard the opening line of the album’s lead single, You Found Me, I went straight to the internet search bar:
“I found God on the corner of First and Amistad”
Deeper cuts like, Ungodly Hour and Happiness, stick with me and lead me to believe that there’s a hit record to be made out of covers selected from tracks 7-12 on most great albums.
I could dig into the meaning of The Fray’s catalogue, but what captures my curiosity today is the band’s return with a new album, The Fray Is Back (obviously).
The Chase was more recently active and continues to hold a wisps of possibility — the relationship at the core of the band is strong and it’s possible that it’ll find its way to a comeback someday — whereas Cofield is a site of some unresolved judgement towards parts of me that struggled to have difficult conversations with my friends and bandmates. As I get older I become more aware of what a gift it was to have a group of friends who wanted to make music together (in addition to the deeply held personal reasons, it’s also practically harder to start a band in your 30s if you haven’t been playing for awhile).
I first caught wind of The Fray’s return through the “Release Radar” playlist on my Spotify account (I’m pretty religious about following artists that I like, so their latest stuff pretty reliably hits this playlist on Friday mornings). I was working away, one afternoon, and realized that a song was breaking through my focus. It reminded me of something, but I didn’t quite recognize the singer. When I looked up, I noticed that it was The Fray. My immediate reaction was, “huh, this seems like a slightly smoother version of The Fray, but I think I like it.”
The sense that something had shifted took me to the web, where I found the Denver Post’s coverage of the band’s plans for a return. I learned that the band was back with a new lead singer, Joe King. The rough and iconic voice of the band’s first albums, Isaac Slade, would not be part of the comeback. There’s a lot that we could learn from Slade’s own story — now a record store owner living his best life — but that’s for another day.
What grabs my attention today is a curiosity about whether the guys in The Fray have come to accept, and maybe even celebrate, the different paths they’ve taken. Do the guys who make up the band’s current lineup feel okay enough about their relationship with its former members to feel a sense of freedom related to the band’s re-emergence? Can they carry what they need to from the possibly challenging moments and conversations, without feeling overly limited or held back? To what extent might they be limited or held back in ways that still feel important?
The energy of The Fray’s return is also interesting. The media campaign around the EP release hits like an indie-band and, in a good way, so too does the music itself. Yet, at the same time I have this awareness that the band carries the experience of a seasoned major-label act. I only have to look at the literally billions of plays that their music has received to be reminded that this isn’t necessarily a plucky upstart of a band. However, in a way that feels really exciting, the current lineup of the The Fray seems to be suggesting that, upon re-launch, they’re feeling a bit like an indie band. It doesn’t seem like a marketing trick, it strikes me as quite authentic — a band that knows that they’ll live through their former sound, but one that also invites you to grow with them towards something evolved. What has happened, behind the scenes, that has allowed the band to take this approach? I’d like to know more.
I’m not sure where my own relationships with my bands will lead, but I’m inspired by The Fray. Also, I like the new EP.