The Fray burst into the charts in 2005 and haven’t looked back since. With platinum selling singles and albums in the US, including Grammy nominated single ‘How To Save A Life’ which sold 3,700,000 downloads, The Fray list among their influences U2 and Counting Crows and have often been compared to British piano bands like Keane and Coldplay. Now on their 3rd album the band show no signs of slowing the momentum that has put them among the top selling bands of this century.
HTF managed to grab a chat with pianist and lead singer Isaac Slade (from his “comfortable chair”). We chat new album, Bruce Springsteen and much more. Check out the interview below..
HTF: so you’ve got a new album out, can you tell us a bit about that?
Isaac Slade: Sure! It’s called ‘Scars and Stories’ and was recorded in Nashville. We wrote it all over the place with someone who was pretty new to our camp, Brendan O’Brien (AC/DC, Pearl Jam and Velvet Revolver producer among others) who’s done a lot of great alternative rock records that we all grew up with and we got a chance to work with him, which we’ve wanted to do a long time. Well we cracked it and our new record comes out today!
HTF: Was there a certain style you were going for with the album?
IS: No, if I think there was anything we were going for it was momentum really, just to keep moving and make a bunch of music and pick the best out of it. I think there are bands that sit down and say “let’s make this record sound like that band or record” or whatever but we just kept making music till it was resonating to all four of us at the same time and those are the twelve [songs] that we picked. There were a lot of other songs we wrote, we recorded like 15. We wrote about 70 and you just pay attention and some of the songs just die in front of you. Some songs just slowly waste away until they’re not breathing anymore then some of the songs just get stronger and stronger.
HTF: A lot of your songs come from personal experience; do you think that’s the best method of song writing or do you become too attached to the songs as a result?
IS: Well I don’t know what the best method is but that’s the only method we really know how to do so we stick to it. I think your most at authority in your own life, that’s the stuff you can really write with the authority that you know and I love Springsteen, the way he makes stories up and I just haven’t been really good at it. We’ve tried it a few times and there’s actually a song on this record that’s sorta half biographical and half fiction. But for the most part we like to keep it real as they say.
HTF: Your first album was the most downloaded debut in history..
IS: (Cuts in) what was? (HTF repeats fact) Ah nice! I didn’t know that. (Isaac proceeds to tell the rest of the band)
HTF: So stemming from that, do you tend to download much music or do you prefer the physical item?
IS: I’ll be honest; the only time I really buy a physical album is on the summer road trip if I rent a car. If I’m driving cross-country I need an album there. But when I travel I don’t have a computer with a CD drive and we don’t have cars so usually I’m on iTunes man. I’d say 9 to 1.
HTF: Do you feel a need to move away from the early albums or do you embrace them?
IS: erm… that’s a good question! This is the first time we’ve really had to answer that. Well we only previously had two records to pick from. Now I think we’re far away enough from that we’ve had to figure out how to play those songs and still be who we are now. You know they feel a little like outfits you wear when your 20 but now we’ve figured out ways to update them and make them our own. Some of them now are still timeless and some of them seem dated and I don’t know why certain songs do. Some of them feel really old. Some of them like ‘How to Save a Life’ feel really fresh and current which is one of the reasons in my opinion it’s been one of our biggest songs. We stumbled around in the dark and somehow stumbled on this more timeless piece next to some other great songs but they just didn’t hold up.
HTF: When you record do you listen to other albums or shut yourselves away and do your own thing?
Is: Oh no man. I think all four of us are different, like I think Ben and I are the most extreme. Ben, the drummer, thinks in terms of arrangement and production. What goes where and what note should be played on what instrument. What rhythm should play on which drum so he consumes music voraciously. He has an enormous vinyl collection and has 10,000 songs and albums on his iPod. I’m at the opposite extreme. I have 15 albums that I’ve listened to non-stop for the last 5 years. I collect photography books and I watch movies. Read a bunch and go to ballets, plays, read magazines and all that stuff. So I’m looking for all sorts of new things where I can find stories and not in other people’s melodies and stuff. I notice that when I listen to tons of music the songs I write start sounding like them.
HTF: Do you get that thing where you wonder if the songs you write are actually someone else’s, like with Paul McCartney and ‘Yesterday’?
IS: I sometimes think of songs in the elevator and still have the melody [of the elevator music] when I come out and sometimes that ends up in the soup so to say
HTF: Would you say Bruce Springsteen is a big influence on your sound in the storytelling sense?
IS: More in the lyrics actually and now as I’m starting to rise from the piano I’m stepping away from the piano and going forward a little bit onstage and he was an influence for me personally. He’s a conductor of the crowd. I never connected with Springsteen’s huge E-street band sound. It always go’s a little too fun for me but Springsteen with an acoustic guitar and 40,000 people singing along to every word, crying and laughing. That is a goal of ours, to have these songs that people not just watch and not saying anything against Lady Gaga or all the way back to Madonna but when you watch those pop stars it’s like you’re watching them from far away. It’s not like some girls going to watch Gaga and want to have a meat dress. You just watch it. I think the real power for all our heroes in what they do is that they write songs I listen to and think that is what I ‘ve wanted to say my whole life. That is how I’m trying to express myself. That’s how I feel and he [Springsteen] figured it out. I find myself more in it and I think that’s a goal of mine that we always write songs that people can own.
HTF: Do you prefer playing live or on records?
IS: Somebody asked us the other day and like the 3 other guys said they prefer going in the studio and I said live. It goes back and forth but I’ve always preferred live a little more. It’s immediate; you can’t do it over again. You can’t stop and say “sorry, sorry I’ve messed up can I do it again?” it’s right then. I love that. You know like theatre, Theatre is such an ancient concept. It goes back to the beginning and the experience is the product and the product is the experience and it’s never going to happen the same again and I like that the most.
HTF: You’re well known for having very Christian lyrics at the beginning of your career and then you kinda moved away from it a bit. Was there a reasoning for that?
IS: Yeah, Not everybody’s Christian! We wanted to tell stories that were bigger than a sub-culture, bigger than a religious context. I just noticed all the songs I was writing, I was just 17 or 18 in this band, had words that nobody I hung out with understood. Like “Salvation by grace due phase of sanctification…” and people were like what! “Sing about me, sing about my life” and I was singing about church and stuff. But I remember the day I was on this trip with my family, we were staying in some friends in oxford [Mississippi] and everyone had gone to bed. I was sitting in this living room with my guitar by myself and I was 19 years old. I’d just broken up with this girl I remember thinking like, if I really wanna do this, I have to figure out how to write about that. How to write about shit I actually care about. The life I’ve lived and love. Loss and hurt. It felt scary, it felt like illegal. I wasn’t supposed to tell the world I had problems too because I was religious and supposed to have all my shit together. I wrote this song called ‘Oceans Away’ that was on our very first E.P. and I’m so damn proud of that song because after I wrote that I threw away all my other songs. It was like all this old vocabulary and imagery and stuff. I started writing regular songs for regular people.
HTF: Have you got any favourite songs on the album?
IS: They’re all so new still. I love them all. The album came out today so it all feels really fresh and exciting. I think some are slowly emerging as favourites but it’s very slow. Right now my favourite thing is the difference between each song. Maybe other people won’t hear it but to me the difference to me between the first song which is ‘Heartbeat’ which is a big, huge, up-tempo rocker and the last song which is just a vocal piano, lullaby, quiet. Also everything in between, it goes up down and around and everything in between. I love that sound and I love that diversity. We didn’t do it on purpose. It’s not like we went “okay we have a 6/8 song and now let’s do a 4/4 song” we just wrote the best we could and the 12 songs we chose all happened to have their own fingerprint. I love that.
HTF: Are there any plans to tour the UK soon?
IS: We are coming back, we’ll play festivals and stuff but we’re doing a big summer tour in the states so we won’t be able to come back to the UK with a proper show until the fall. We’re gonna wait for the weather to get good and then bad. Then we’ll return.
HTF: Turning up in England on a miserable morning.
IS: Well we’re kinda that band. So we’re gonna wait till the weather gets crappy!
HTF: Thank you very much for your time, you take care mate!
Is: Have a wicked summer, enjoy the festivals and tell the Foo Fighters we said hi! We’ll see you in the fall!
The Fray’s new album ‘Scars and Stories’ is out now
