Rosie Cope shares her thoughts on The Fray’s latest album, due out on March 5.
By Rosie Cope
By Rosie Cope
American soft pop-rock band The Fray’s success has been full of peaks and troughs since they burst onto the music scene in 2006. After a rough couple of years, the band have stepped up to the plate ahead of their new album Scars and Stories.
The Colorado-based band shot to worldwide fame in 2006 with the release of their single How to Save a Life. They hope to further this success with new single Heartbeat, which lead singer Isaac Slade said was inspired by his travels through South Africa and Rwanda.
“At first it was really hard to stay open in the face of so much pain and heartache,” Slade said. “But then I ended up meeting so many cool and inspiring people, and all these ideas for lyrics and melodies just started rushing in.”
Much like most of their other music, the 12 tracks on this album show various inspirations drawn from bands such as U2 and particularly Coldplay.
Scars and Stories shows hints of Chris Martin’s soothing and melodic vocal style creeping in throughout songs like Heartbeat and his piano style through I Can Barely Say.
The album throws up several catchy tracks, but they are not to the standard of previous releases like Over My Head (Cable Car) and You Found Me. With the danger of the ‘same old, same old’ style simply being used in a new album, the band may struggle to reach the fan base they had before.
On the other hand, Scars and Stories will please lifelong fans of The Fray and will give them something to talk about until a much needed tour announcement.