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This stuff is pure musical and lyrical inspiration.
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The Frames' latest album, The Cost, contains only a handful of tracks like "Sad Songs," where the guitar springs along and the tempo stays steady... More typical is the title track, a noir-ish doom ballad in the Richard Thompson vein, designed to leave listeners stunned and morose.
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The Cost is an emotional trip worth taking, one that seems to move further inward in its focus and insight with each track.
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Singer Glen Hansard moves from quiet introspection to earnest Jeremy Enigk-like wailing and back again, all the while reminding you just how rewarding a listen The Cost is.
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UncutThere's a nervy, frayed soulfulness to these songs. [Feb 2007, p.76]
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Epic in both sound and content, The Cost is both The Frames' most accomplished album and deeper and more rewarding than U2's recent work.
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The album is sophisticated and layered with deft orchestration. And yet, the band's songwriting and delivery display an earnestness and lack of pretension that's pure rock.
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FilterAmbitious, beautiful and sorrowful--it's everything a fan of the gloriously sad stuff could hope for on a rainy day. [#24, p.97]
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The Cost... captures them at their best.
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Q Magazine[It] is the stirring, rounded collection leader Glen Hansard has hinted at since they formed in 1990. [Feb 2007, p.99]
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Under The RadarRecording The Cost live has injected some feeling and adrenaline into an otherwise soft and ethereal album that somehow sizzles with underlying zeal and commitment. [#16, p.91]
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Paste MagazineWhile The Cost has as many majestic peaks as the Himalayas, the cumulative effect is exhaustingly monolithic. [Mar 2007, p.67]
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The Cost is hardly a poor album - in fact it's a quite good album - but after the release of so many gems, I find it difficult for it to completely measure up to the stiff competition.
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The music stays diverse and dynamic. [26 Feb 2007]
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"The Cost"... comprises 10 tracks that range from hopeful (but triumphant!) to sorrowful (but triumphant!) to morose (but triumphant!).
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BlenderColdplay barely scratch these levels of exultation and agony. [Apr 2007, p.111]
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However textured the musical journey The Cost offers, however, the album tends to lapse too excruciatingly into the darkness from which Hansard’s creativity seems to come.
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The tempos are more uniform, and the huge arcs of all those ballads, hoisted high by fiddle, abstract guitar fragments and Glen Hansard's scratchy tenor, feel surprisingly safe.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 13 out of 15
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Mixed: 1 out of 15
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Negative: 1 out of 15
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Jan 4, 2012
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ToddH.Sep 17, 2008Uneven, but with several stand-out songs, most especially People Get Ready, which deserves far more international airplay than it has received.
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MatthewP.Feb 26, 2008