The Fray- s/t

The basic definition of the word ‘fray’ is struggle. It implies disorder, defiance and dispute. This is the fundamental issue with The Fray. There is no disorder, no anarchy, no struggling. This record is safe, inoffensive and completely innocuous. The Fray’s sophomore release is the kind of record that you listen to all the way through, and then immediately forget about.

The best thing about The Fray is that now they seem like an actual band. On their first record, it seemed like the sole brainchild of lead singer Isaac Slade. The whole record revolved around his voice and his piano playing. On The Fray, the guitars and drums have become more prominent. This is a step in the right direction, but they don’t do anything with the guitar. It’s there to provide shading for Slade’s piano playing, which is fine, except his piano playing isn’t very interesting.

Slade’s voice isn’t very interesting either. It’s an amalgam of every mainstream white rock singer of the past decade. Chris Martin? He’s here. Rob Thomas? You bet. Stephen Jenkins? Yup. Johnny Rezeznik? In spades. Amazingly, Eddie Vedder’s baritone is nowhere to be found. Maybe Slade misplaced his copy of Ten.

Every song on the record follows the same basic structure. There is a dramatic piano intro, the band comes in and then slows down for the verse. Slade sings something vaguely inspirational like: “Don’t know what you’re made of/till the one thing you want is coming with the dawn,” or “I found God on the corner of First and Amistad.” Then it’s time for the chorus. The band softly roars back in, and Slade’s voice hits the upper register in all the right places. Does this sound familiar? It should, because Coldplay has been doing the exact same thing for almost a decade.

However, Coldplay have one thing that The Fray does not have, and that is Chris Martin. His charisma carries the band. Isaac Slade has no charisma, so his songs come off like bad eighth grade poetry. The problems are even more pronounced because every song on The Fray uses the same mid-tempo template. They occasionally change it up by using a synthesizer (*gasp!*), but that’s about it. The earnest singing of Slade is also a problem. Playing the piano and weaving thick tapestries of clichés does not equal depth son.

Every couple of years a band like The Fray becomes popular. They become popular because they seem like an antidote to prefabricated pop music. Pianos, earnest singing and soaring choruses signal reality for a lot of people. Their first record blows up because they seem so different, and then the second record flops because it’s exactly the same. This is exactly what has happened to the Fray, except this time around they don’t even have a halfway decent single to sustain them. It’s so boring that it can’t even be called bad. Beige is a better term for it. If you like piano based pop music, invest in the first Elton John record instead. He can actually write songs.