ALBUM REVIEW: FROG - 1000 VARIATIONS ON THE SAME SONG

By Meredith Mattlin

It’s a bold move to name your album 1000 Variations on the Same Song. At first glance, the title sounds like a self-conscious dig—one that would be ironic for a band with as much breadth as Frog. But a thorough listen through 1000 Variations reveals the title to be a celebration, rather than a condemnation, of all the myriad ways to iterate on a single theme.

That being said, there’s something refreshing about such a straightforward disclaimer wrapped in the title, plainly acknowledging the difficulty in making art that feels novel and original from the jump. It’s hard not to become a victim of your own perspective once you’ve been doing the same thing for a while, and Frog’s been at this game for over a decade. Despite that difficulty, though, Frog prevails over the temptation towards redundancy. The punchy keys on “JUST USE YR HIPS VAR. VI” give way to a pensive banjo lick and vocalist-guitarist Daniel Bateman’s echoey, signature falsetto on the following track, “MIXTAPE LINER NOTES VAR. VII.” He goes from “ice on my wrist, Christ how it drips / Don’t move your lips, just use your hips” on the former to “your lips like embers on the canvas of the sky and rosy-fingered dawn” on the latter. Poetic range, I’d argue. The 11 tracks that make up 1000 Variations are indisputably sonically distinct from one another, all without reinventing the wheel. 

Frog has developed a cult following over the years. More than just locals, New York is baked into Frog’s ethos, a backdrop for all the jangly, layered acoustic guitar licks and longing vignettes about coming of age, falling in and out of love, mourning and innocence and heartbreak. Their 2019 album, Count Bateman, is overflowing with local lore. “Hartsdale Hotbox” meanders nostalgically through the tiny Westchester town of Hartsdale in the same breath as it references “open mics in Bed Stuyvesant” and “high school dames you longed to bang” who have “changed their names and moved to Queens.” My personal favorite Frog song, “RIP to the Empire State Flea Market,” similarly provides a NY-suburban backdrop. It’s a heart-wrenching ode to loss—both of love and a rather bleak Westchester mall—that can move you to tears if you’re in the right mood. “Black Friday,” another Count Bateman crowd favorite, starts with “play songs outside the BBQ on 8th and 23rd,” presumably lower Manhattan. Bateman speaks to his relocation from Queens to New Rochelle on the banjo-laden “New Ro” off Frog’s 2023 album, Grog. And so on.

Frog at Elsewhere (Brooklyn), July 2024

1000 Variations is no different: the very first track, “STILLWELL THEME,” identifies the address of the Long Island City construction supply shop pictured on the album cover. Our narrator in “Stillwell” is, seemingly, an alcoholic construction worker, oscillating between scenes of union-labor life and saccharine advertisements for the titular hardware store. The album’s last song, “ARTHUR MCBRIDE ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE VAR. X” is an irreverent take on the Irish folk song: in this version, our friends are paying for drugs with fake cash in Harlem. Like a good romcom (and with no less humor than one), New York—its many characters, its liminal spaces between the city and suburbs—is one of the Frog’s many “variations,” and they do it well.

But you don’t need to be a New Yorker to love Frog. (In fact, they’ve enjoyed more success overseas, with a sizable fanbase in England.) Their wistful verses about getting high in bleak suburban landscapes seem, at first glance, quintessentially Midwest-emo. On “WHERE YOU FROM VAR VIII,” Bateman breathily croons, “everybody lines up on the lawn / Get stoned up before dawn, same bat-time tomorrow stumbling home / Late show, attendance is low, the girls look upset.” Like many of Frog’s best songs, it’s got a mumblecore quality to it, fuzzy accounts of feeling out of place—maybe like revisiting your hometown dive, or running into an old girlfriend for the first time in years, seeing past lives and past selves in old haunts.

Frog’s discography is a series of masterful character studies, with protagonists speaking in present tense about distant times and places, sometimes 20 years ago, sometimes 200. Whether Bateman’s characters are pulling from autobiographical events or not is irrelevant; there’s emotional truth to be found in much of it, and a lot of goofiness in between the vulnerability.  “She'll throw it on in the car, and run her hands through her hair / Track one side A Helena by MCR / Take it down a touch or two, Thirteen by Big Star,” Bateman sings on “Mixtape.” In the chorus, he’s “crying over broken Casios.” That’s cinema. It’s a magnetic heartbreaker of a song—and what’s more nostalgic for a millennial audience than a mixtape with MCR, Dashboard Confessional, and The National?

1000 Variations leans more heavily into lo-fi, bedroom-esque tones than Grog. Alex G fans would feel at home in the muted drums and stripped-down acoustics in “HOUSEBROKEN VAR. IV” and “BLAMING IT ALL ON THE LIFESTYLE VAR. 5.” Through syrupy riffs on “Housebroken,” Bateman paints poignant pictures of yearning and desperation. “Ain’t this town serve alcohol / It’s got me crawling up a wall,” Bateman laments before repeating that he is “not fucking around.” It’s fuller-sounding than you’d expect for Frog’s two-person outfit, brimming with texture and contrast. And, plainly, it’s funny. Similarly, “TOP OF THE POPS VAR. I” feels like a gut punch and a hug at the same time.

Tracks like “WHERE YOU FROM VAR. VIII” and “DOOMSCROLLING VAR. II” showcase Bateman’s range as a vocalist and songwriter. His voice has a warbly, almost vibrato quality, dipping and flying in pitch and tone. It’s easy to hear the Elliot Smith influence, too, throughout much of the album. But comparisons will always feel loose when it comes to Frog—they do something undeniably unique. 1000 Variations is a testament to their ability to evolve over the years without abandoning their twangy, indie, Americana-tinged roots. It’s evocative and earnest, but without being too self-indulgent. It’s campy, but too self-aware to be cringey. It’s Frog leaning into Frog, growing where it’s planted, cultivating something simultaneously homey and fresh.