"My problem with Christian music," Slade says, "is
a lot of it is too happy. It's too smiley. It's
like you know from the get-go that it's not
completely honest, because they never say they're
sad. It's like we're not allowed to talk about
anything else. I mean, we all have opinions. I
have opinions about morality and about culture and
that stuff, but I think the sheer nature of art is
kind of take it or leave it. If you pound people
over the head, they get suspicious, they don't
trust you and it's not art -- it's propaganda. And
we're not about Jesus propaganda."
But King and Slade didn't abandon their
existential inclinations entirely. And as they
started pulling together songs for Reason,
alongside the moments of somber heartache
expressed in "Vienna" and "Oceans Away" (two cuts
from Movement that were repeated on the
second recording), they penned some soul-searching
tracks. "Without Reason," for example, includes
these lines: "I do it on a whim, with no
motivation/Following this line and I don't know
why/But I've learned to capture time, it's my
redirection/I don't want to live this life without
reason."
Before the Fray recorded Reason, there
was another personnel shift. After Johnson
announced that he was off to acting school in New
York, Wysocki, one of his best friends and another
alum of Faith Christian, was tapped as his
replacement. And the recording itself produced
another change. Realizing that they'd been a
little too ambitious in the studio, the four
members of the Fray decided that to pull the songs
off live, they'd need someone to play lead. Welsh
was the obvious choice, since he'd already played
in Ember with Slade and Wysocki. He and Wysocki
had been friends since third grade; their parents
knew each other through Up With People, "a
peaceful-organization-slash-dating-service," as
Welsh describes it.
"We kind of musically came as a pair," Wysocki
says. "The Fray was the first band that I played
in without him. So when I thought of us needing
another guitarist, he's the first one I thought
of."
Welsh's debut performance was at the Climax
thirteen months ago, which explains the lackluster
show I saw. But since then, the band has forged an
undeniable chemistry. (The quintet has returned to
a foursome; Battenhouse parted ways with the group
in September, and Future Jazz Project bassist
Casey Sidwell and Dave Hedin have filled in while
the act searches for a permanent replacement.)
Slade and King continue to evolve as songwriters.
In the beginning, their interplay was somewhat
distracting, both live and on record, because of
their disparate approaches to instrumentation and
arrangements -- Slade's compositions were more
piano- oriented, while King's were guitar-driven.
Now, though, it's nearly impossible to distinguish
one songwriter from the other. In recalibrating
the band's aesthetic, any past Coldplay references
have been downplayed, resulting in a sound that
recalls Start Here-era Gloria Record
textures mated with the more anthemic tendencies
of Muse. Needless to say, the Fray no longer has
to place a ringer in the crowd to beg for an
encore.
A few weeks ago, the Fray played to a raucous
capacity crowd at the Soiled Dove. But at the end
of the set, when the fans were clamoring for more,
the band didn't oblige.
"It's very simple," Slade says flatly. "We ran
out of songs. We don't play 'Come Together'
anymore. We retired 'City Hall.' We retired
'Without Reason.' That's really it. We played
every song we had."
"This is why we didn't play an encore,"
Welsh interjects. "Joe's sitting there looking at
the clock -- we had like ten minutes or so left.
He turns around and mouths 'Come Together' to the
bass player. And as Joe was saying it to him, I
was like, 'Lord, please let Dave not know
how to play "Come Together" so we don't ever have
to play that song again.' Dave looked at him and
shrugged his shoulders.
"God is real."
