The Fray's new album panned in Rolling Stone

• I couldn't even understand half the stuff your ranting about JP, if your thinking of being a music critic heres my advice; make sure people understand the stuff your saying. The Fray have spent 3 years working on this album, don't try and say they haven't put any effort or imagination into it, there are in my opinion quite a few good tracks on that album.

• Nice one JP, you managed to write 8 whole paragraphs without actually saying anything at all. Your opinion probably would have been worth reading about if you hadn't coated it in that layer of snipes, quips and one-liners that seemed to scream "amateur critic".

• Since Westword can't reprint it for legal reasons, I'll put it here so everyone can read it, and so Westword won't take any flak. Rolling Stone Review: The Fray (s/t) 2/5 stars. The 2005 debut from these Denver guys went double platinum stateside, thanks much to the single "How to Save a Life," which played on Grey's Anatomy. No big changes are afoot for Disc Two: The band's piano rock suggests a more earnest, less arty Coldplay. The Fray are going for introspection and dramatic sweep but don't rise above bland pleasantries. "You Found Me" is a driving prom anthem that tosses in bits of ponderous poetry � "I found God on the corner of First and Amistad" � and a huge, weak-kneed chorus that sounds nearly focus-grouped. Recommendation if the Fray want to save more lives: Put the spleen back in. --CHRISTIAN HOARD 1 Jan. 2009

• If you're less arty than Coldplay -- <i>less</i> arty than a band who basically used Radiohead and then Brian Eno as crutches -- then you're probably not very "arty" at all, and what's "art" if it's not very "arty"? It's probably like having a chocolate bar that's not very chocolate, which is like ... eating wax, and trying to call it chocolate. Less pretentious (if I may reduce "more earnest" to that), to The Fray's credit, but one of the accepted and functional definitions of 'pretense' is "a piece of make-believe." Again: what is art without make-believe? I'm sorry. Even though it's Rolling Stone -- the same magazine which (disgustingly, and wrongly) hailed Connor Oberst as the new Bob Dylan -- I am going to have to say that I called it. There are no surprises here, and -- while a safe, vanilla, morning-television-friendly, and money-making bet for The Fray Factory -- we're not "wowed". Of course, most people don't want to be "wowed," and would rather continue thinking that the world is flat and drops off beyond the horizon than be a little uncomfortable (it's called learning) for a bit while their reality expands around them. That's one less opportunity for consciousness-expansion for you and me, thanks to people who have ample opportunity to make it happen; thus dropping the ball to maintain the fake plastic Hollywood facade a little longer. Money, bright lights, and jet-setting work well to pacify new ideas and make you think "this <i>is</i> what we were shooting for, right? This was the goal...?" Any of you buy an Escalade or a Hummer yet? (Now I'm just being mean... sorry.) Dave Hererra compared some of The Fray's guitar work to Nels Cline in a previous blog, so I propose this: do what Wilco did, The Fray: start listening to Can, Tom Verlaine, Neu!, stop boring the shit out of those of us who have brains, and blow ... our ... minds; Take a cue from Talk Talk and make your <i>Laughing Stock</i>. Yeah, your label will drop you, but then you'll know who your <i>real</i> fans are, and you'll lose all the dreck who just bought your record because they heard it on One Tree Hill; while clinging to the last vestiges of any kind original thought during routine mass-media consciousness obliteration. The spotlight's hot, isn't it? Haven't you made enough money off the tasteless and addle-pated masses to pay your recording debt? Can't you smell the bullshit from so high-up on your bejeweled pyre? Can you at least smell the fire? (Is Hell a metaphor, or a real place?) Where do you go from 2 stars? To make the same mistake again would be an embarrassment; to give up now would be to end the way which so many bands end: to realize you weren't good enough to make yourself a unique and undeniable force in music history, and get a day job (or, if you were smart and lucky, live off interest and vanish). The third option: reinvent yourselves; release your <i>Kid A</i>. Blow ... our ... minds. PLEASE! It's not just for the good of humankind, but for your own as well. ...anybody? Bah! Most people don't even know shit from Shinola, or brass from woodwind. (How's that for originality?) Once again, I'm probably wasting my time, but I've always liked the sentiment behind "don't expect: suggest." I'd like to think that the world isn't flat, that music is about art, ideas, and imagination, and that existence is about transcendence; that music can (and should) help us have those ideas which propel us higher and higher -- away from Hollywood, corporations, socially-obscured slavery, comfort zones, and mediocrity. Anybody want to help? ...I didn't think so.

• Having not heard the new album, I can't weigh in on the accuracy of the review. But I've always figured that if everything goes well, then great, The Fray have had the time of their lives. If, on the other hand, they run into some downs, it makes a better "How We Spent Our Summer Vacation" movie or book. As Nora Ephron's screenwriter mother told her, "Take notes. Everything is copy."

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