Gargoyles, ghouls and Grog: Frog’s newest release is confident and swampy

By Molly Szymanski

For the last decade, Danny Bateman has been tweaking and mastering the formula for freaky lo-fi. Under the moniker Frog, his songs are woefully, whimsically nostalgic, tackling suburbia in a way that encapsulates the smallest slices of existence. The band cites influences spanning from Townes van Zandt to Modest Mouse, and boasts a discography that swings precariously between folksy and shoegaze, united solely under an umbrella of fuzz.

Bateman’s brother Steve joined him in Frog around the time their last record, Count Bateman, was released in 2019. The record was a transitional period encapsulated in a mere 10 tracks, as Bateman’s old bandmate Tom White moved from the band’s native New York to England. With its narrator tenderly entering an uncertain solo era, Count Bateman is crafted much like your grandmother’s decades-old soup recipe, radiating a gentle warmth.

Fast forward four years and two kids later, the Batemans return from the swamp for their fifth release, Grog. It’s held on to Count Bateman’s garage-y sound, but the shy persona and subdued grainy sound is replaced with something more confident, as if it had spent the last few years perfecting its dad bod.

The record begins, after a 20-second introductory track sampled from a YouTube video about its 18th-century beverage namesake, with “Goes W/Out Saying.” Of all the songs, this one sounds the least like what we know as Frog, dominated by twinkling keys and a looping drum beat — almost like an Owen Ashworth imitation. It does, however, hold onto Bateman’s signature falsetto.

On the album’s Bandcamp page, Bateman said, “If [Frog’s 2015 release, Kind of Blah] is set in New York, and Count Bateman is set in LA in the 70s, this one I think is set in Hades. The whole thing is bathed in flames and the grooves are bubbling bubbling and the devil is a DJ smiling broadly.”

No track embodies the floating gargoyles and boiling cauldrons in Bateman’s mind palace better than the sixth track off of Grog, “DOOM SONG.” The song starts off at one hundred and stays there — droning guitar and unsettling vocals drilling a hole in the skulls of its listeners for the entirety of its deceptively short runtime of just under two minutes.

Aiming to be “gothic and cartoonish,” according to Bateman, the record successfully balances the two. From “DOOM SONG” and “So Twisted Fate,” you get dark freakiness. “420!!” and singles “Black on Black on Black” and “Maybelline” show the Batemans’ inspiration from Jonathan Richman with bouncing chord progressions and upbeat, sillier lyrics that give the album much-needed whimsy.

The final track is a bit of an unsung hero — not featured among the three singles released leading up to Grog’s drop, “Gone Back to Stanford” almost emulates alt-country à la Silver Jews mixed with the power pop stylings of Jeff Rosenstock. It’s got twangs and bangs, blending well with the folksier tracks “Ur Still Mine” and “New Ro” that come before it. While we know Frog can tackle lo-fi effortlessly and have worked with folk elements before, the subtle transition into unabashed country-inspired tracks will be what sets this long-awaited release apart from its predecessors.