Miss Frankie Rose is the veteran of scads of über-trendy bands. In desperately hip, always stewing Brooklyn, she's a one-woman music scene. Inspired by the mid/late-Eighties UK indie sound, The Cramps, Phil Spector and Sixties girl groups, she's landed in north London with her new band Frankie Rose and the Outs. Their debut album is a wonderful fuzz-pop confection, but could it work live?
She first cropped up early in 2007 as the drummer/bassist for The Vivian Girls, a female trio inspired by The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, The Shop Assistants, The Primitives and The Flatmates. In July 2008 she left The Vivians to drum for Crystal Stilts, another Brooklyn outfit who added the out-of-focus sound of New Zealand's Chills to the template. She also did time with Dum Dum Girls, another band with a similar vibe. Then, in autumn last year, she ditched Crystal Stilts to front her own band.
Just over a year on, Frankie Rose and the Outs are playing the final show of the first UK tour. It's also close to a full stop for the Luminaire, which closes at the end of the month. However often it sells out, the Kilburn venue is unable to balance the books. A pity and a loss.
Where Frankie Rose and the Outs win out over their leader's previous bands is by applying rich, harmonic vocals and Spector-type twinkly percussion, balancing the headlong, fuzz-filled rush. It's as if The Paris Sisters had become Brooklyn trendies. Songs like the stomping, Crampsian "Candy" have irresistibly rich choruses. The harmony-filled "Little Brown-Haired Girls" is destined to be thought of as a lost classic in 15 years. Santo and Johnny are thrown in the pot for the mostly instrumental "Memo". As is the drumming from The Jesus and Mary Chain's "Never Understand" on "Girlfriend Island".
Watch the video for "Candy"
It was a difficult sell at the Luminaire. Although the sound is usually good there, Miss Frankie's gang were given a muffled and thin mix that obscured how the band fitted together. In person, they were less forbidding than the promo pics suggest. Where they'd looked like the cousins of Macbeth's witches, drummer Kate Ryan was plain normal. Seven-foot guitarist Margot Bianca now seemed more schoolteacher than anything else. Miss Frankie herself was The Bangles' Susanna Hoffs as a roughed-up indie type. Only bassist Caroline Yes! had the expected severe persona, enhanced by her equally severe sides-shaven hairdo. Whatever ice they exuded was thawed by Miss Frankie's gabby stage persona - the chit-chat took in her Stevie Ray Vaughan-style hat, eating fish and chips, and how Glasgow girls wore almost nothing in winter.
Thankfully, the songs outshone the repartee. A ripping run-through of The Vivian Girls' "Where Do You Run To?" placed this band as a step beyond the past. Sparser live than on the album, "Must be Nice" was more Sixties garage rock than Eighties indie. "Little Brown-Haired Girls" was less full, but still shone melodically. The sound desk's shortcomings couldn't obscure the songs.
On record, Frankie Rose and the Outs are a dream. Live, they are a rough diamond. Past history means it's hard to know whether this is the final resting place for the Brooklyn gadfly. But with songs this good and a band this sympathetic, it would be great if she stuck around and narrowed the gap.
- Find Frankie Rose and the Outs on Amazon
