Punk-edged country about Judy Garland? How could Loverboy’s Fallon Gold not fall in love with Frog?

Loverboy first encountered Frog – a two-person band from Queens, NY – when we heard their joyous track ‘Judy Garland’. Of course we wanted to know ‘why Judy?’ and their knowledge and enthusiasm for Jude’s place in the American psyche and queer liberation was as breathtaking as their music. “All the drag queens and all the whores couldn’t get poor Judy back on her laurels”, indeed.

Frog – Dan Bateman and Thomas White – have always been bigger in the UK than in the States which is pretty curious as their music is steeped in Americana and the push-pull of partriotism and cynicism that is at the heart of so much subversive cultural expression in US music. But hey, we in the UK obviously have immaculate taste because not only are frog beautiful on record, they are even more stellar live.

This wasn’t a surprise to Loverboy. We always felt that live was going to be where you felt the true heat of their work. But what we weren’t expecting was the sheer power of it and being left with a feeling like you’ve just woken from a slightly disturbing yet stirring dream you now can’t recall the narrative of.

Frog were in the UK for a week for their first ever shows over here, along with Alex Coppola who was filming the tour for his documentary ‘Frog: Across The Pond’. Coppola also directed the wonderous video for Judy Garland, fyi

Their tour spanned south and north England and into Scotland, bookended by gigs in London. Loverboy went to both. The first, at Servants Jazz Quarters in Dalston, was one of the best gigs we have ever been to. The energy, the power of Frog was just altering. The second London gig was at the ubiquitous DIY Space For London in Bermondsey, a haven for alternative, queer, lofi, misfit happenings. Again it was Frog’s rawness that hit but this time it was dirtier, the last push of their energy from this intense tour powing you in the face.

 

Images by Alex Coppola

So what do Frog sound like? It’s one of those hard to put your finger on sounds but the closest we can get is that it’s as if filthy country and lofi queercore had a mutant lovechild and named it Frog.

At the first show, a request from Loverboy for ‘Judy Garland’ was met with the disappointing news that they never play it because its frantic complexity is impossible live. The little teases told us before they went on stage the second time that they just hadn’t been able to work it out for this gig. Then they opened with it. The cheeky darlings. ‘Fucking’ sounds as if the Beach Boys had been allowed to get dirty and write a raw ditty about cruising surfer boys on a California beach. ‘Photograph’ and ‘Knocking On The Door’, and ‘Catchyalater’ with their lilting, hooky choruses, are songs to fall in love to.  ‘Nancy Kerrigan’ tells the tale of a girl who wears a cardigan just like the infamous skater before she had her legs broken by Tonya Harding’s hired thugs. No wonder we adore these boys.

 

Buy Frog’s albums ‘Frog’ and ‘Kind Of Blah’ from Bandcamp