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As a guitar record Paul’s Tomb may be, somewhat surprisingly, the best guitar record since, gosh, Pink (2005)?
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As always, Mercer’s vocals threaten to dominate the songs--each line could be the last in a prolonged, bellowed tantrum--but the mostly live-in-studio takes capture the skilled frenzy of Frog Eyes’ shows.
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As is the case with nearly every other Frog Eyes release, Paul’s Tomb may be riddled with claw marks, broken needles, vomiting angels, and eternal suffering, but it’s well worth the visit.
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You’ve got death and exaltation, followed by a sly wink at rock history. Not a bad set of tools for making smart, defiant music.
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A volatile brew of uneasy drama and emotion from a band that, on this showing, should always record live.
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If Paul’s Tomb: A Triumph is not their best album, it’s certainly a close second (Tears of the Valedictorian remains their high-water mark for me). However, I do feel confident calling Paul’s Tomb the band’s most cohesive and expansive LP.
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This release feels freer, though--not easier, necessarily, but delivered with a clarity of purpose not quite as muddled, consumption-wise, by sheer weirdness as was their previous LP, Tears Of The Valedictorian, for instance.
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UncutFrog Eyes' fifth album has been three years in the making and is every bit as much of an epic as its acclaimed predecessor "Tears Of The Valedictorian." [May 2010, p.90]
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Paul's Tomb: A Triumph has two distinct modes – those slowburn instrumental passages, and the lyric driven, quicker, melodic segments. Frog Eyes succeed when the joins between the two really 'flow', when the segues work.
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Mercer rants like the end is extremely nigh and songs refuse choruses, stapling together shattered fragments of classic psychedelia and the bits of Springsteen riffs that their countrymen Arcade Fire left behind.
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A disappointing pattern begins to take shape in each of these long chapters, as the band begins on a promising note during the first three minutes, but exhausts itself over the last nine.
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Recorded mostly live off the floor, including some of the vocals, Paul’s Tomb has a power that the band’s previous albums lacked.
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Under The RadarIt'd be nice if they'd push themselves a bit harder to break some new stylistic ground, as with a sound like this compelling, it's obvious that they aren't lacking in sheer imagination and songwriting talent to do so. [Spring 2010, p.63]