On Valentine’s Day, for those who celebrate and those who don’t, this one shouldn’t feel so ordinary: Frog, the “real cool guys from NY” part-cult indie folk band, is back with their sixth studio album on Feb. 14, titled “1000 Variations of the Same Song.”
A band who, once you hear, you will never quit humming for yourself or the line in front of you in grocery stores; at its core, the music is all about love, its release date symbolically speaking in tandem with the leading singles already released, “MIXTAPE LINER NOTES VAR. VII,” “JUST USE YR HIPS VAR. VI” and “HOUSEBROKEN VAR. IV.”
I sat down with Daniel Bateman, a.k.a. Frog, on Monday, Jan. 27, to hear about the album. Before the new album was announced, I emailed the band, expressing my wish to speak with my favorite band in the world. Bateman was more than willing to make this happen, breaking the news of this new project coming soon.
Bateman joined a band at 15. “I played with other people, but that was the first time I was in a band with my friends in high school,” he tells me. The band played a lot of rock music; mostly covers in the beginning. With musical influence from The Police and a group of friends who were all really into Nirvana, those jumpy, loud songs sourced the early years of playing music for people, being in a garage, creating sound and art and being seen by peers, trying new things.
Making music became “whatever was going through my mind at the time…which is what it continues to be,” Bateman tells me. The moment he had written a song, the band realized it was “cooler to do your own stuff.”
Music was always about “having a good time.”
As Frog prepares to release their sixth album, I had to ask what it means for Bateman to head down new paths and experiment with new sounds, for even as different and exciting the first two singles have been, to any listener, they are revered and received, undeniably, as Frog songs. To which Bateman tells me, “I just try to get better at making records every time. I think I get better at it every time.”
Frog’s single “MIXTAPE LINER NOTES VAR. VII” is written from the perspective of somebody making a mixtape for someone. The vivid lyricism on the track brings to life this story and perspective.
“Back in the day, if you wanted to show someone music, you made a mixtape for them,” says Bateman. Then, “you have to make the art and you have to color it in. That was one of the ways you showed someone how you felt for them.”
“The funny thing is maybe kids don’t know what a mixtape is in this context,” he said. We agreed that making a Spotify playlist for someone was the digital version and I wondered how Bateman gets his music today.
“Anything.” Getting, buying, or streaming music is “about ease of use for me. I just want to be able to find something that I am thinking about really quickly.” The way people get their music today is a testament to how we can try new things. An ever-evolving world of alternatives and avenues to music gets us to today.
“Making mixtapes for people was good because you had to show who you were. The order was really important.” He explains the memory of making mixtapes for someone by saying you couldn’t put the best song first, it couldn’t be the first track. In that case, “you’re giving up all your game right away, you gotta hide it away, so that when you find it it’s like crazy.”
Bateman describes this as “making art with other art,” the mixtape as a gift, a way to tell people how you feel about them. In “MIXTAPE LINER NOTES VAR. VII” the narrator’s mixtape features “Helena” by My Chemical Romance, followed by Big Star’s “Thirteen.” All on the same tape as two tracks by The National. These are tracks some would certainly consider genre-differing and lyrically contrasting; however, they tell a story and are an art form.
“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.”
The concept of ordering tracks led our conversation into the tracklist of “1000 Variations of the Same Song.”
“The Variations is just a bunch of ideas that I’m exploring…and I’m doing different little runs at them…each song is just a mirror of the song before.” Bateman prefaces, though, that they all have a different feeling.
Bateman describes putting together this record as freeing, with tracks melting into one another, pieces seeping into the following variation (in this case a track). “It allows you to not have to worry about one form because you have a different one you’re talking to.”
“Form is the most interesting and most important aspect of any art.”
I thought that was a really awesome thing to say.
Frog got their name from a 1980s Casio 101, which featured a preset sound of a frog, seemingly “unusable” in any song. Bateman referred to it as “horrible and hilarious,” hence being compared to frog noises.
Since then, Bateman purchased a different, personal Casio from “this guy, like a crust punk,” offering the Casio for only five dollars.
“I can’t justify it, it isn’t rational/I get high and I cry it over broken Casios/I could’ve tried to hide it, it’s in the past and all/In case I’m wrong these next two songs are by The National”
“And I was like hell yeah. […] I got five dollars, gave it to him, and I’ve used it ever since. It’s a great machine.”
For a lot of the early parts of this album, “I was doing a lot of the music on the broken keyboard, so the voicings aren’t your choice because only some of the keys work, and you can go different placings because you’re not able to use it like you want to.”
This broken casio is exactly what makes the sound so unique. For those undesired limitations, there are new things to try, as Bateman has always done and is excited to continue to do so.
“You gotta try to have fun doing something new.”
1000 is a good, round number, but it does take some time to reach. Bateman is more than serious about this large number of variations. “They don’t know what they’re dealing with…they don’t know,” he jokes.
The songs are a love letter and an ode to the person listening: “Every aspect of art can be an invitation,” that’s what makes it so interesting. There is no better word than “invitation” to describe leaning into Frog’s collection and the unbelievably loyal companionship it offers to me and its listeners. The songs are my friends, I’ve always seen friends and people from the past come out so clearly in these songs. “1000 Variations of the Same Song” is going to be the soundtrack to my 2025, and it should be yours too.
This will be the best Valentine’s Day yet!
