Essential
High Land, Hard Rain (1983)
The wounderchild. The songs were written when he was 16; At 19 he released his debut. Only Scots can laugh at the madness of having beautiful beaches but bad weather, which leads to longing glances over the cold sea – this is also how great music is made. Roddy Frame’s lyrics convey a rare mix of wisdom without being precocious, and enthusiasm for being young: “Despite what they’ll say, wasn’t youth, we hit the truth.”
The Glasgow post-punk scene tried to co-opt the guitarist, but Frame was interested in Latin, jangle and pop: “I have more in common with Paul Simon than with bands like The Birthday Party. Do you want as many people as possible to hear your music or not? I would rather play in front of a hundred thousand people than a hundred. Simon & Garfunkel perform in Central Park and still make no compromises. They compose whatever they want. I’m drawn to musicians like that.” Scottish wind plowed through Frame’s face. But who cares about gray clouds and lousy breezes with melodies like this?
Knife (1984)
Frame had the man of the hour, Mark Knopfler, oversee the production. Now he sang about wanting to be number one, the songs have motivating titles like “Still On Fire”. Frame experimented with song lengths and Caribbean flair, trusting the impact of just eight tracks. But in the most exciting British music year of the decade, the year of young masters like Morrissey and George Michael, the 20-year-old experienced his first failure.
The pain may have shaped his career to this day – and Frame no longer wanted to sound like he did on his debut album. But from then on the prodigy was under strict critical observation.
Dreamland (1993)
For the second time, Frame had his album produced by an unexpected mentor: this time Ryuichi Sakamoto. The Yellow Magic Orchestra musician created soft meadows of sound from which songs like “Valium Summer” sprout and in which Frame, immortalized in “Birds”, finally achieves his mastery of magic. Every note floats like a bubble towards the sky. Even the trumpet and violin proclaim peace. The folk sketch “Spanish Horses” still makes it into his live sets today.
Roddy Frame – Seven Dials (2014)
On his last album to date, Frame humorously looks back on his bad luck (“Forty Days Of Rain”). But there is a prevailing feeling of nostalgia, perhaps also of sadness at not having conquered America (actually the world!) after all. “What are you going to do about your life? Who we gotta sue to get it right? “Anyway you choose, it’s just a ride,” he sings in the Californian “Postcard” and plays his flamenco guitar solo from the classic “Oblivious.” As a musician, Frame has reached perfection at the age of 50. He paints with instruments: a line here, a dab there – the piece “Into The Sun” is a painting.
Rewarding
Love (1987)
The America Album. Frame rolled every R American, committed gospel singers, paid respect to Aretha Franklin with “RESPECT”, based “Working In A Goldmine” on Dylan’s “North Country Blues” and sang, following Stevie Wonder: “Cause love is a giving with no need of return.” Everything is included. Frame wore a quiff and a leather jacket and actually wrote a hit with “Somewhere In My Heart” (number 3, not in the US, but in the UK). He could have been the role model for Arctic Monkeys singer Alex Turner, who developed more and more from a British street kid towards a rock’n’roll epigone both visually and as a composer.
Frestonia (1995)
Aztec Camera was always a solo project – after this album, Frame only performed under his name. A last attempt with a larger budget, a kind of Americana album, dreamed up in Frestonia in Notting Hill: “Well, baby, I never said I was gonna be Jesus!” Frame shouts almost defensively in “Rainy Season” and starts the journey towards that direction Singer-songwriter. “Life is a long walk home,” it says again in “Phenomenal World,” which can mean both: happiness in old age – or happiness only in death. In any case, in the Britpop year of 1995, the man who was already a veteran at 31 had no chance. Number 100 in the British album charts, his lowest point to date.
Roddy Frame – The North Star (1998)
The “solo debut” is his most difficult album to obtain and is characterized by struggles – the planned single “Sister Shadow”, for example, remained unreleased. Ten superb songs about looking in the rearview mirror, although for the first time his pieces sounded as if they were not tied to any time. The musician Frame, still young (only 34), has been recognized as a historical figure, for example in the BBC series “Songwriters’ Circle”. With “Autumn Flower” he opened his stroller-with-the-notepad phase; It undoubtedly belongs in the canon of eternal songs about observing nature.
Roddy Frame – Surf (2002)
An ambivalent experience, like any fundamentally successful album recorded solo with only acoustic guitar: songs like “Big Ben” and especially “Small World” are so overwhelming that you would wish they had the dramatic emphasis of a band arrangement that also had clearer changes in tempo would have brought with it. Frame can still afford the luxury of doing without.
Roddy Frame – Western Skies (2006)
In a trio formation, Frame took place opposite “Surf” only slightly flavorful album about false dreams (“Rock God”). However, it was flanked by two live records with him as solo guitarist (“Ronnie Scott’s”, “Osaka”), which underline his need for reduction at the time.
Weaker
Stray (1990)
With the help of Clash guitarist Mick Jones (“Good Morning Britain”), an over-the-top Brit rock album was created with occasional lyrical slip-ups: “Life’s a one take movie” – he’s a sucker for “Life is” comparisons. Frame now wore a mop hairstyle and a camouflage jacket. “The politicians gaze across it’s slime/ I need another way to waste my time/ Get outta London, get outta London.” He was in escape mode. He wasn’t quite with himself.
Book
The Lyrics
Frame’s most beautiful lines are “Who needs the movie?/ You can see the music anyway” from “Stray”. His melancholic look at the unpredictability of aging is almost brilliantly concise: “Life is strange/ Things change” (“In Orbit”). And at the age of 16 it was already clear to him that grace in particular can offer the greatest possible target: “What do you mean by beauty?/ I hope you know the consequences.” (“Orchid Girl”).
Precious items
Rarities and obscurities
“Real Tears”
Orange Juice drummer Steven Daly described the first Aztec Camera demo as a “patchwork of Joy Division and The Cure” – unfortunately he’s right.
“The Spirit Shows”
Even better: 1980s demo from the unreleased “Green Jacket Gray” album. Maturity and melancholy – everything already laid out in the teenage frame.
“Just Like Gold”
The first single from 1981 has not yet been released on CD or as a download.
“Jump”
1984 laid the foundation for the indie band cover pop song trend that is still valid today. Behind the fanfare, a song about self-sacrifice.
“The Red Flag”
The Socialists’ anthem is based on Melchior Franck’s 17th-century “Ach Tannenbaum,” which later became “O Tannenbaum.” Frame’s version was released in 1987.
“Hot Club Of Christ”
Christmas, the second: In the occasional rockabilly style “High Country”In his debut, he re-recorded “White Christmas”.
“True Colors”
In 1990, Frame joined the ranks of musicians who covered the unfortunate kitsch of the song composed by Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg and published by Cyndi Lauper in 1986.
“In My Life”
Beatles and Frame – sounds like an inevitable connection. But apart from this acoustic guitar interpretation, he left the Fab Four’s work untouched.
“All My Days”
Frame almost never appears on other people’s albums – he did one for Edwyn Collins, his friend from the Postcard days “Losing Sleep”-Plate a rare exception. The collaboration has a special meaning: it was Collins’ first newly recorded work after his two strokes, and Frame later released his album “Seven Dials” on Collins’ newly founded label AED.
“Hungry Ghost Eyes”
The B-side of the unreleased “Sister Shadow” single in 1998.