Nevertheless this post is a manifestation of opinion, mostly formulated this morning while I watched The Fray's AOL Music Session.
Let me interject here and give due credit to AOL for their Music Sessions. If you aren't watching them already you should be. Seriously, they have every artist from Neil Diamond to Dashboard Confessional and they are wonderful, intimate performances of the best the artists have to offer.
As I was saying, The Fray. I tried for a long time to avoid this band, not because I didn't like their music but because I just kept hearing everyone talk about them (and isn't interesting how every person in the world was the first to discover them?!). Not to mention "Over My Head (Cable Car)" was all over the radio. And I will openly admit: I tapped my foot to it, I bobbed my head, I belted it in my car, I knew every word...I loved it. However, the pangs of conforming kept me from buying the album and I moved on, or tried to. And then along comes "How to Save a Life." Poignant, beautiful, catchy and ultimately tied to one of the most addictive TV shows in history, Grey's Anatomy.
Obviously these guys and their managers know how to work a formula, and if it bothered me at first, it was something that I just had to resign myself to, because I like them. There I said it. And ya know why me, my mother and every other emotional soul out there loves them? Because they are the band you wish wasn't mainstream. They are the group you wished you stumbled upon on MySpace music or in some second hand CD shop. They are the band you wished you could say "Hey have you heard The Fray? No? Well listen to this," to which your friends would respond with awe and admiration for your uncanny musical prowess.
The Fray is not this. But they sound like they are, and that's why I can't help but adore their music. Perhaps some, or most, of this is tied up in my existence as an emotional junkie, one who is never afraid to wear his feelings on his sleeve or the find the next sad song to express how I'm feeling. I respond with a great deal of relevancy to their lyrics--most recently and tortuously to "Look After You" which I can't stop playing because it so describes my life right now. And I know they are sometime sappy and a little too addicted to the song that sends a message, but even if that's not your fare, everyone can still relate to it publicly or privately.
Beyond content is the aesthetic of their music. Pianos, violins, acoustics: all those instruments that only serve to aggrandize the emotional punch of the songs. The most effective "instrument" though for me is Isaac Slade's voice. He cracks it in all the right places; he pushes it when it needs to be pushed; pulls it back when appropriate; and, his tone is so undeniably sexy that it becomes the perfect addition to The Fray Formula which produced The Fray Fixation for The Fray Fans. And--ugh--I am now amassed forever with The Fray Fans.
I feel like I'm in The Fray's Anonymous meeting. "Hi, I'm Seth...and I like The Fray." But isn't that first step to reconciliation? I feel proud of myself and, yes, I like--oh Hell--I love The Fray.
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