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Reviews: Daniel Hales and the Frost Heaves ~ Frost Heaves
Posted on Sunday, May 03, 2009 @ 11:49:28 PDT
Topic: Reviews
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Artist: Daniel Hales and the Frost Heaves
CD: Frost Heaves
Home: Greenfield, Massachusetts
Style: Pop
Quote: "First and foremost is Daniel Hales’ musing original intellectualism, combined with exciting new metaphorical take on the material world."
By Michael Haley
Frost Heaves is a searching, searing, frequently seducing, noteworthy disc. Comprised of engaging East-Coast pop, streamy belles-lettres libretto, and an infusion of the psychedelic, lead singer Daniel Hales’ calculated words and melodies engulf all listeners who dare enter his world of discontinuance. The music carries one willingly and spiritually along and across the New England landscape Mr. Hales has experienced.
First and foremost is Daniel Hales’ musing original intellectualism, combined with exciting new metaphorical takes on the material world. For instance, during the sensitive-to-the-masses song "Shepherd of Lost Shopping Carts," for example, Hales blithely metamorphoses: "I’m the rector of the salvage lot, a congregation up on cinder blocks, no more need for their struts and their shocks."
On "Tel Aviv Waltz," Hales shows his oft-repeated gift for marked and poetic contemplation of his own inventive brand:
What is the difference between a thick soup and a stew
What is the difference between a bad cold and a flu
What is the difference between a Muslim and a Jew
Which prays on a rug and which prays in a pew ...
In recanting romantic encounters, the Frost Heaves unveil a bit of the degenerate:
We talked about Rilke and the distance to Mars
She asked if I’d been to Burlington, Vermont ...
She said I don’t want to die in my sleep
So if you’re an axe killer you can finish me now ...
There is the droll with the philosophical on this lyrically entertaining album.
The hard-won and done title track (five years in the making), is sung in trilled, stiletto vocals. Daniel Hales can point a dagger when he wants to. Sometimes Mr. Hales’ voice cracks. One almost believes this is calculated too, but it is not. Fortunately for Mr. Hales, however, his weakened voice stroke at times is well compensated for by the very pleasing and highly stylized pop vocals of Abbie Barrett.
Overall, this CD is moderately adorned pop coordinated and capably carried on by the pugnacious and pungent popster Daniel Hales. The record is best absent the psychedelic, and some of what works well is Hales’ conceived syllabicated accentuation as on the tune "North Pole in July." At intervals, one hears traces of Fleetwood Mac (on the song "Wrong Meter"), and generally speaking, there are Neil Young musical inferences.
Daniel Hales is an acute, perhaps thrilling observer of his surroundings, and the eyefuls of such remembrances he can translate into clever, persuasive lyrical roux.
Artist Website: http://www.thefrostheaves.com
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