A Frog tune is a heady cocktail mixed by eye, poured with brash intuition and a generous hand, then dubiously marketed as a hangover remedy. The end result is volatile, non-replicable, and almost always extraordinary. To ossify the recipe by writing it down would be to lose in translation the magic of its bravado.
Staccato, cabaret-style keys. Unbusy arrangement. Grounded, punctuating rhythm. And of course, Danny Bateman’s drawling, untamed, hook-laden vocal harmonies. The familiar ingredients—and a few not-so-familiar—are all present in “Je Ne Sais Pas,” the lead single from Frog’s forthcoming LP Frog for Sale, and like so much of their recent work, this track is substantially more than the sum of its parts. It’s a bawdy, comical portrayal of a mid-life crisis that somehow still manages to be catchy, eloquent, and buoyant. It’s frequently playful, at times existential, and more than anything else, “Je Ne Sais Pas” is pure unbridled fun in a way that few bands dare to be. It captures the Bateman brothers at the height of their creative whimsy, and proves once again that Frog might be the most interesting thing to happen to popular music in the past decade.
Nobody does this—whatever this is—better than Danny and Steve Bateman. In fact, nobody else has quite figured out how to do it at all. The conventional trappings of genre—indie pop by way of freak folk, or perhaps emo-tinged alt-americana—are wholly inadequate here. The truth, like the band itself, is much stranger. “Je Ne Sais Pas” pulses with a raw, deconstructed R&B sensibility, rich in direction and immensely original even in the midst of its influences. There’s a mature and adventurous songwriting on display—an almost show-tuney bombast with the infectious momentum of Paul McCartney and the bold spectacle of Tim Fite. Oddity and charm serve as uncredited instruments, deployed with expertise to convey consonance and dissonance, tension and release.
Ultimately, what makes Frog resonate with a fervent, ever-growing fan base is their un-self-conscious, even subversive intimacy. Time and time again, Frog lays itself bare almost recklessly, as if they don’t know how precious this quality is.
Frog will be on tour this April (with founding member Tom White returning on bass) to support the highly anticipated April 17th release of Frog for Sale. Listen to “Je Ne Sais Pas” below (and then listen to it again, and again, and again):
Written by John Bagatta
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