Frank and Walters go out on a musical limb

Groove Tube with Jimi McDonnell – tribunegroove@live.ie

With a superb new album to promote, The Frank And Walters play Róisín Dubh on Saturday, October 1. One of Ireland’s most enduring and respected indie bands, the Cork quartet recently released their seventh studio album Songs for the Walking Wounded. Drummer Ashley Keating is in ebullient form, and he begins the interview by explaining where the album title came from.

“We’d be known for producing upbeat, happy pop songs, and with this record it just seemed a bit different from our previous albums,” he says. “We were working on it for a couple of years, and I’d say we had about 30 odd songs. But the ones that kept coming to the top were the sad, or more introspective, kind of darker ones.”

Known for up-tempo hits like After All and Colours, The Frank And Walters have gone out on a bit of a limb with Walking Wounded. The lead single Stages is indicative of the album’s tone with lyrics like ‘And you’ll never find out what’s it like in their shoes/ You will never find out, till you feel it too’.

“We’re still the Frank And Walters, the same personnel, but there just seemed to be an added tinge to this album,” Ashley says. “I suppose we were nervous about releasing it, but when it went out there, people actually seemed to appreciate the honesty of it. We were delighted with the reaction.”

Given that The Frank And Walters have been on the go since 1990, it seems valid to point out that many of their loyal fans are mature enough to engage with the album’s darker themes. Ashley agrees.

“When we’re putting it together, that’s who we’re thinking of,” he says. “The days of us thinking ‘oh, it’s world domination time’, they’re long gone! You’re making records for yourselves and people who like the band, really.”

That said, though, the album is actually appealing to those who were babies, if even that, when the Franks were in their 1990s pomp.

“I guess younger people are more in tune with their emotions,” Ashley says. “With the older, essentially my generation and before, everything was swept under the carpet. We kind of have noticed that this album, bizarrely, has touched people who are a bit younger than us.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.