MusicLoveMusic’s Album Of The Year: FRANK FROM BLUE VELVET ‘I Am Frank’

‘I AM FRANK,’ the long player from East Sussex-based FRANK FROM BLUE VELVET is MusicLoveMusic’s 2025 Album Of The Year.

Full of quixotic intrigue and mystique, ‘I Am Frank’ overflows with an elegant grandeur unmatched throughout 2025.

“FOR lack of a better word, we’re delighted with this news,” said founder and frontman, Andrew J Davies. “It’s good to get a bit of thoughtful validation now and then. We can all pretend it doesn’t matter, but when someone drops an ‘album of the year’ on you, try not to walk around with a little extra swagger.

“The album has had a great reaction, with some really nice things written about it. People have also come up to us at gigs saying they keep discovering new sounds or layers in the production, which I’m glad about – it wasn’t a quick in-and-out kind of album. Some bands want to capture their exact live sound, but we see playing live and working in the studio as having different qualities and demands.

“When we play live, many of the songs from the album have different arrangements – sometimes extended, sometimes faster, less textured, and more immediate. They’re fine-tuned for the environment. That’s just our take on it, neither right nor wrong, simply our perspective.

“Ogs’ drum trickery has also been highlighted, which is great affirmation. He’s a nightmare in the studio, never playing the same thing twice, low boredom threshold, but luckily everything he does is pretty wonderful. After drumming for Peter and The Test Babies, he worked as a drum technician for The Cure, and Placebo for quite some time, so he knows his craft inside out.”

MusicLoveMusic’s original review/interview below – first published 14 May 2025.

EAST SUSSEX three-piece Frank From Blue Velvet today unveil their magnum opus, the nine-track album ‘I Am Frank,’ via Property of the Lost Records.

Born out of the grief of a troubled father and daughter relationship, one ultimately healed through music, the band comprises Andrew J Davies (the father), Ruby (the daughter), and former Peter and the Test Tube Babies drummer Ogs, with the line-up occasionally bolstered by the inclusion of violin, cornet and keyboards.

But via the anguish of that family rift, an album of astonishing beauty has arrived. It’s sprawling, emotive, heartfelt, gritty, menacing. It deserves to serve as a breakthrough, a statement, and despite it only being May, it’s MusicLoveMusic’s ‘Album of the Year.’

The long player is a collection of epic Wild West soundtracks from the greatest films never made, each one a masterpiece. It’s music for misfits and mavericks. Summon the posse, we’ve a hell of a journey ahead.

As the dawn fades and the sun rises, the soft strains of opening track Running Man (Morricone Man?) drift into earshot. Feel the heat, taste the dust, but be warned, the beginning may seduce, the ending borders on chaos.

“With that ending I said to Ogs and the sound guy, ‘I’m going to do something on the ending.’ explains Davies. “They both said ‘what?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’  The sound guy asked me for levels. I said, ‘no point, don’t know what I’m going do’. So, I started kind of speaking in tongues and carried on after the track finished. Both of them said ‘what the fuck was that?’ The sound guy asked if he could have another – which of course was a ‘no.’”

‘The Lullaby’ contains an almost PiL-like rhythm section, the added haunting, renegade Celtic cowboy choral sounds take your breath away. The song has swing to die for – it also contains a menacing ‘don’t fuck with us’ undercurrent. This is a song, an album, a band to take seriously.

There’s splendour and brilliance throughout, including previous single ‘Empty’ and its dreamy South American, Caribbean chic, and ‘Two Rolls of the Dice,’ the song Nick Cave will eye with both regret, and envy.

But it’s impossible not to detect a sense the album appears to be drawing the listener towards some kind of magical, mystic high. And those feelings are confirmed with the arrival of penultimate track, ‘I Know You’re Damaged,’ a stunning song, of love, hope, hurt, along with little – or no – compromise.

Whisper it carefully, there’s the merest hint of a U2 anthem here. But let’s not adopt the contrary high ground of the genre snobs, they’ve made a decent enough living from writing and performing catchy, rock and roll hymns, and ‘I Know You’re Damaged’ holds its own against the very best of them

Regrettably, and all too quickly, the hazy dreamscape of ‘I Am Frank’ heralds the beginning of the end of the journey, a song you never want to end. It’s a huge number, a Tarantino crescendo, and closes out one of the finest albums of the past twenty-five years.

“We are really pleased with ‘I Am Frank,’” adds Davies. “Normally once a recording is finished I need a lot of space away from it, but not this. I’ve played it quite a bit – I hope that doesn’t sound conceited.

“But in terms of success we manage our expectations very tightly. We’d like to be offered more gigs outside Hastings and festivals – which both are a fucker of a challenge – and airplay, reviews, increased Spotify numbers, all those modest kind of things. It’s a nightmare being heard above the ‘noise,’ so we enjoy the odd ‘moments’ and enjoy making music and hanging out together. Simple folk.”

He is Frank. They are Frank. Je suis Frank.

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(Interview copyright Mike Bradley, MBJournalism)