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Frisbie
New Debut
(Appendix)
First Appeared in The Music Box, March 2008, Volume 15, #3
Written by John Metzger
Mon March 3, 2008, 07:00 AM CST
New Debut, the title to Frisbie’s latest album, is — for those who know
better — a bit of a humorous joke. Many outfits have come and gone in the years
that have passed since 2000, when the group issued The Subversive Sounds of
Love, one of the most promising power pop albums in ages. The set ought to
have garnered a wealth of attention and widespread, mainstream success for the
ensemble. For an all-too-brief moment, it did appear as if Frisbie would become
the latest buzz band, albeit with the twist that it actually deserved all of the
hype that it was receiving.
Frisbie’s momentum was disrupted, however, when drummer Zack Kantor’s bipolar
disorder became too much to bear. For a time, the outfit maintained a low-key
profile with the hope that Kantor would recover enough to resume performing. In
an attempt to keep its name in lights, co-founders Steve Frisbie and Liam Davis
recorded a subdued acoustic set, entitled period., which featured a slew
of Kantor’s previously unrecorded songs. Between 2003 and 2007, though, the
ensemble largely remained in limbo, and Frisbie and Davis made only occasional
appearances as duo. In the meantime, Davis launched a separate career as a
producer and sideman for Justin Roberts, an equally talented artist working in
the family music market. This lent credence to the notion that Frisbie unjustly
was destined to be a mere footnote in Chicago’s rich, musical history.
Nevertheless, in an effort to put their problems behind them, Frisbie and
Davis resurrected the outfit by adding drummer Gerald Dowd and bass player Matt
Thompson to their midst. At long last, Frisbie’s silence was broken last fall
when it issued the appropriately titled New Debut. With its majestic
harmonies, sugar-spun melodies, and intricately detailed arrangements, the
collection is every bit as delectable as The Subversive Sounds of Love
was. In fact, it’s safe to say that, despite its lengthy absence, the ensemble
has not missed a beat.
Throughout New Debut, Frisbie reaches far and wide across the expanses
of the power pop terrain, drawing lines that connect The Beatles and The Monkees
with Cheap Trick and The Who. As always, songs might begin in one place, only to
fall into another dimension, and this allows Frisbie to bring just about
everything imaginable under its umbrella. Touches of Trick of the Tail-era
Genesis, for example, feed the prog-rock undercurrents of Shame On; the
addition of horns undeniably lends a Chicago-esque flair to Half-Breed;
and I Speak Your Mind rolls from, among other things, Elvis Costello to
The Police.
Countless bands have tried their hands at crafting similar concoctions. Yet,
they typically have wound up sounding stiff and stale. Frisbie, on the other
hand, magically makes each melody — from the arena-ready title track to the
propulsive ebullience of Lather — stick. For all of the reference points
that flitted through The Subversive Sounds of Love, the outfit clearly
demonstrated that it had a wonderful gift for transforming its many influences
into something unique. As improbable as it might seem, especially after all this
time, New Debut finds Frisbie getting right back to business, and its
confectionary pop anthems are even more addictive than ever. 
New Debut is NOT available from
Amazon.com. To order, please visit Frisbie's Site!
Ratings
1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!
Copyright © 2008 The Music Box
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