Something Real
(Doghouse)
Release Date: 08/08/2006 12:00
The Frampton sisters, Meg, 21, and Dia, 18, make teen rock for the iPod Shuffle set, whirling emo, ultra-pop and bad-girl guitar into songs that, just shy of frothy, aim squarely for most-played lists. Their first album ladles on the lovely harmonies, but lyricist Megs mind is outside the choir room, somewhere underneath the bleachers. Naturally, exes abound, and tracks like Monster a stitching of unmitigated metal chug and poignantly ethereal vocals tear a page from the emo-boy diary, scolding the cheaters and the merely luckless with something approaching grandeur. Rebecca, a moony, pseudo-literary piano ballad, overreaches, but other experiments sultry acoustic lark Cardigan Weather, reggae-laced Masterpiece come off with mid-career élan. Theyre adult to the point of being precocious, but their bewitching power comes from the way they straddle the wholesome and the unchaste.
Download: Monster, Roses