Singled out

by Jon Fletcher

Liam Frost has all the ingredients to sell well, but where are the singles?

"Frost opens up not with the Nick Cave cover he's promised, but the opening bars of Bon Jovi's 'Living On A Prayer'"

New Noise meets Liam Frost on a squash court. Papered with other band's posters for tours past and complete with a double bed, the court now serves as a dressing room for artists performing at the 900-capacity University of London Students' Union (ULU).

"We won't fill it," says Frost of the venue, and he's right. A few hours later, accompanied by his band, The Slowdown Family, he plays to a crowd that is notably thin at the edges, a pattern he says has been repeated all over the country, with the exception of a packed hometown show in Manchester's Academy 2.

"It was full capacity and everyone was singing along to all the songs," Frost recalls. "I was like, 'Shit, this is amazing.'"

The discrepency between the Manchester and London experiences gets to the heart of the Liam Frost paradox; why, following the release of his excellent debut full length, 'Show Me How The Spectres Dance', is he not playing sell out shows? It would be easy to blame over-optimistic booking, but once you're familiar with the album, this argument just doesn't stack up.

The record is dominated by one theme: the deaths, ten years apart, of Frost's father and brother. You might expect this to result in a tepid soup of morbid introspection, but it's nothing of the sort. "I think there's a really hopeful spin on all the songs," says Frost. "It's not necessarily just about being down all the time. It's about trying to find hope in all these terrible events." As a result, the album produces an exalting blend of sadness and joy, 10 tracks of strong-willed acoustic pop that are accessible enough to have mainstream appeal. Frost's mentors had every reason to expect it to be a venue-filler.

No, the problem lies in a lack of obvious singles. This isn't an album lacking in texture or substance and there are hooks aplenty, but they arrive after a few listens, subtly and unannounced. 'She Painted Pictures', a jaunty, jubilant shout of a song, is the only track to grab you at the first play, but this was released as a limited-edition single long before the album's release. And, ironically, the song fails to offer up much that's new after the first listen, so that it's gradually eclipsed by the rest of the record. As a result, Frost is having to rely on the slow burn of live shows and word of mouth.

And live, he's on fire. Though he claims to be afflicted by a "horrible weird nervous energy" before his shows, once on stage Frost is a natural. He's helped by a voice that has a strength and clarity most perfoming artists fail to get anywhere close to. Between tracks, he banters and jokes with the crowd, guiding them through shifts in mood from comedy to sorrow and back.

During the ULU show, he seems to take an age to pick up an auto harp for a seated solo performance at the front of the stage, and audience attention notably begins to wain. Seeming to sense this, Frost opens up not with the Nick Cave cover he's promised, but the opening bars of Bon Jovi's 'Living On A Prayer'. It's perfectly judged – the crowd joins in, and when he eventually turns (after a joking attempt at No Doubt's 'You And Me') to render a jaw-dropping version of Cave's 'Are You The One That I've Been Waiting For', the audience stands captivated.

Frost doesn’t work alone – he is billed as Liam Frost & The Slowdown Family, and quick to acknowledge the importance of the rest of the group. His reluctance to hog the limelight shows in the origins of the band name. Reluctant to name an early demo after himself, Frost instead used a lyric from one of his songs and it became the ‘Slowdown EP’. The band’s musically ambidextrous role is particularly noteworthy live, functioning as a true band rather than as the suffix to a star implied by the name.

The use of keyboard player Sadie Baker as a vocalist is especially effective in drawing out the emotional depth of the songs and this part of her role seems to be growing. The collective weight of the band really hits home during ‘The Mourners Of St Pauls’. On the record, this track seems a little skittish and while it climbs and builds, it doesn’t quite deliver on its promises. Live, the song’s gradual rise through the gears acquires a mesmerising power – it’s what the phrase 'spine-tingling' was invented for. 

Attending a live show also provides a key piece of evidence in the Mystery Of The Unsold Tickets. ‘Show Me How the Spectres Dance’ is far from representative of the entire contents of Frost’s song cellar. "There's a couple of odd tracks that aren't on the album but which are live favourites," Frost admits. Common sense suggests that a good live song will make an equally good radio song, as they would play to the same strengths. And while the idea of building an album solely to sell is artistically challenging, there is no reason not to release them as stand-alone singles now that the album is out. This is perhaps most true of one of Frost’s new songs – ‘At First It Felt Like Darkness’ which, even at first listen, is one of the standout tracks of the night.

It was Frost’s live shows that first got him noticed and it could well be his live successes that hold the key to achieving mainstream popularity. His songs surely deserve it.

[Read the full transcript of this interview here]

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