The guard dogs are napping. They didn’t bark last night so there mustn’t have been a bear. The mini fridge is whirring, empty. The cicadas are buzzing and the ceiling fan promises to keep spinning. I’m surrounded by hundreds of miles of the Redwoods’ deferent silence, sipping on instant coffee in a dilapidated motel. The roosters woke me up this morning, from dreams of a small town at night lit up by orange streetlights and cheap fluorescent storefronts. I ran into a younger version of my dad smiling in a purple shirt, a good reminder to call him.
I am the only person staying in this eight room motel buried in the forest. Five years ago I couldn't afford having a phone and now I have a job that reimburses me for lodging. I’m heading to Ukiah to interview a monolingual Spanish mother of a 5-year-old autistic boy about her life in rural Northern California. On my way down yesterday, I sat in an In-N-Out drive-through and discussed the complexities of love on the phone with a boy whose pants are stained with chicken blood. Earlier in the day I climbed out the side of my car (broken driver’s side door) and had a job interview, wearing glasses to hide the fact I got pink eye from one of the kids I work with at my daycare job. I could smell the cigarette butt in my pocket I forgot to throw away but I think I got the job cleaning vacation homes.
All this to say nothing but that lately I want to disappear completely. Sometimes the story is too much, sometimes I’m tired of writing it. Not in a dying way, but in an escaping to a cabin in the woods sort of way and living a very simple life with buttered toast and FM radio for awhile where there’s nobody around who wants to hang out or fall in love or perceive me. I’m 27 now and I’m already reminiscing on my early twenties, I need a moment to catch my breath. I need to sit on the quilted bed of my motel room and listen to Frog’s Count Batemen and take on someone else’s story for a bit. This is an album review, not a diary entry.
I love this album. It is the first Frog album without drummer Tom White and is now ultimately the first solo foray of Danny Batemen who decided to record the whole damn thing onto tape, although they did write a lot of the songs together. It is also admittedly the only one I’ve listened to; it is so good I’m afraid to listen to any other album and be disappointed. There’s no skips for me, but I don’t think I have it in me to talk about every song. I’m hungry and need to eat breakfast but this motel room only has Top Ramen.
To fully understand this album it must be known that Batemen has a strong emotional allegiance to his hometown of New Rochelle, NY and that the songwriting is absolutely grounded in place, so grounded in fact you could plug the lyrics into Google Maps and take a look around Street View.
“Hartsdale Hotbox” was the first and only song I listened to for awhile before I realized the rest of the album is probably as good. It is dogged reminiscence of youth painted by “small town boredom and big city angst”, but in the chorus I find a deeper spiritual meaning in the fleeting miracle of it all.
Just chilling is a virtue when you’re up / way past your curfew
Even the simplest moments of our youth - staying up late, hanging out in a parked car, getting stoned in a bush and eating frozen yogurt - weren't to be taken for granted because they were the moments we gave ourselves at a time where we’re constantly being given direction. Staying up past your curfew was as free as you could get. As an adult, “curfew” hints more at my mortality than anything else.
Whenever I ride a horse for my first time and that baby is galloping full speed across a pasture, I want to be listening to “Borned King”. This strident folky riff drives this song home while Batemen blends fictitious medieval lore with contemporary personal anecdote. I love the naïveté of the drum machine in this track (and most of his songs) that emphasizes the eternal youthfulness of this album.
There are some lyrics in this world that are modest at best on their own but are more evocative and meaningful when framed by the right musicianship. When he drops his register and sings “Sometimes when I look at old pictures of you I could just crawl right / through the frame” over that jangly guitar I choke a little bit on my own lost loves.
This song slaps me in the face whenever it starts. It’s about a girl, but isn’t it always? Frog manages to tear my heart out with a song that talks about staying up late watching Colbert with his lady and driving around in a Scion. These are unsexy motifs and would make Rilke roll in his grave but is just the sort of language I crave in poetry these days. It is real and simple and relatable. Anything takes on a poetic quality in the light of love. Sometimes we don’t need a sonnet or an ode. We don’t always need Rumi’s devotion. Sometimes it really is just “I’m thinking of you / It’s something I do”.
So we’re not driving a Scion anymore, we actually start this song in a Toyota Camry listening to Prodigy.
This song is hot and probably my favorite on the album. It’s as horny as the Violent Femmes. Batemen is a wonderful lyricist because he’s a great story teller. “Taste” makes you feel like a voyeur on a successful date.
On Spotify, “You Know I’m Down” is the most popular track on the album by far, probably because the chorus will live in your head as a montage of your crush plays.
Call me when you're feeling down / Call me when he's not around / Call me, let's get out this town / You know I'm down
Bateman’s musicality is capable of expressing the heart of the song without the lyrics, but we’re so happy he can write too, even though he talks about boiling potatoes in this song. I’m just here for the pure youthful hedonism.
I wish I could live a thousand lives / Court and wed a thousand wives / Sow the bed with golden lies / Journey to the center of a thousand thighs
My favorite thing about this album is its innocence, like coming across someone else’s old pictures from high school. Another review puts it better than I could:
For all their grounding in twenty-first century city life, Frog songs are like old boxes found in an antique shop. You always get the feeling that when you open them up you will find something valuable and slightly mysterious inside – faded photographs, a peridot brooch, or just the lavender scent of the past.
The lyrics are perfectly, expertly, romantically simple. We needed an artist to turn from the grandiosity of love and ground us in its reality.
Do you love me / Do you think of me / Drunk at a party
Yayy I had been missing your writing! Love this
Never heard of him before but hey I’m 75. Thanks I listened and now I’m hooked. Oh yea the article was great also. Love ya. Tell dad I said HI.