Frank Tribes – Lean Out Your Window (S.E.N. Records)
At the end of the third track, “Airplane, Anything?”, there’s a great guitar solo (courtesy of Frank himself, or maybe fellow lead guitarist Brian Doyle), which enlivens things so successfully, I was suddenly wide awake and aware that I was supposed to be reviewing this album. Prior to this I’d endured nearly ten minutes of some fairly pleasant music. And that’s it, in a nutshell. It’s pleasant stuff, alright, but it surely needs to be more than that, especially as it is Frank’s fourth solo album.

The singing is agreeable, the tunes are okay, the lyrics adequate, the arrangements suitable to the song; and there’s the problem. When another sunburst guitar solo crops up to finish track 6, “Time To Forget”, you’re again somewhat grateful, and left wondering why there hasn’t been more of the same to help elevate the music above the mundane. In between, well above the routine level, the best song on the album, “Only My Voice”, has come and gone, with its stronger melody still echoing in my headphones. It isn’t until we reach the final track, “Now You’re Listening”, that Frank really hits his rock stride again, where the instruments at last seem to argue, get entangled with each other, and leap for freedom.

It is a pity that Frank and his cohorts didn’t start the album off with track 10, and then continue to push each other around before adopting a more mannered approach. A polite album for a polite audience, I suppose. I am sorry to say, though, that I won’t be listening with them.
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