Rediscover Frost Children All Over Again in 'Hearth Room'
Photo: Lauren Davis
Electronic pop duo Frost Children, comprised of siblings Lulu and Angel Prost, have released their newest album and second album of 2023, Hearth Room, and it's easily their best record yet. The new album showcases a different side of the duo. It trades the addictively chaotic, uptempo synthesizers that drove their last album, SPEED RUN, for a more unplugged acoustic sound with insular atmospherics and intimate arrangements.
The opening track, “Lethal,” kicks off the album with layers of entrancing electronically warped vocals before a flood of instruments paints the sonic space like a digital symphony. The track erupts into an alt-rock banger, a curveball from the band who’ve become embraced for their maximalist electronic kitchen-sink compositions. It bleeds out its dejection with bruising power chords before exhaling into the anguished hook, “If I had a spine / You’d be mine.” The following track, “Birdsong,” plays to the Prosts' strengths as rock musicians while using electronic flourishes sparingly and strategically, peaking with a screamo wail that feels like a moment of loving surrender rather than dissonance.
Their previously released track "Stare At The Sun" is by far the heaviest effort on the record, standing out early in the tracklist as an outlier on an album that is all strummed acoustic guitars, scraped güiros, and marimbas. The siblings spit out visceral romantic disillusionment as Lulu’s guitar and Angel’s bass lock horns in a tricky math-rock melody. As the beat fades, a flurry of jagged synths enters the mix before shifting suddenly into a punishing breakdown. This juxtaposes the gentle synth-pop of “Marigold," which sounds like a straightforward love song, and it peaks with Angel’s desperate plea, “Tell me lies, tell me lies / I believe you.” Zeroing in on bringing vocals to the front, they control the narration of their hypnotic electronic pop, even if its sincerity is processed through the warped glaze of punctured autotune.
Other standout tracks include the tender "Oats From a Mug” and “Got Me By the Tail,” and the Death Cab For Cutie-esque "Frost Park," which ultimately leads to "Bob Dylan," the best damn song on this album. Over swirling, midwest emo guitar riffs, Angel relays a dream in which Bob Dylan releases a new song about “all the horrifying newly commercialized street corners of New York.” Frost Children eulogize the decrepit state of urban bohemia un "Bob Dylan" by narrating the Nobel laureate’s journey through the now-vapid and over-commercialized sites where he first became an artist. “Tribeca / Hudson Yards / Bedford Ave and 7th / Rue Charlot in the Marais/ That canal that’s in East London,” Angel intones as if narrating a bitterly nostalgic Adam Curtis supercut. Dylan sees the poster promoting his recent single next to an ad of Jack Harlow eating a Sweetgreen salad and wants to “tear it all to shreds and shed a tear about where he went wrong.”
Hearth Room ends on a mellow, heartwarming note with "Offer My Love." The finale is an ode to love, opening with the sounds of a babbling brook, crickets, and the silvery, twinkling chimes of a triangle. Lulu and Angel's iridescent vocals usher in layers of saxophone, drum patterns, and subdued guitar riffs as they vulnerably offer up their hearts to someone. Heartfelt lines like, "Now if I had the chance and make you understand / Just let me say I'll love you how I can," and "And when the sky shifts hue / So then to the orange moon / I offer my love / To you, I offer my love," are paired with saccharine, sweeping instrumentals, and lulling harmonies, creating a profoundly sentimental, head-in-the clouds sonic experience that washes over the listener.
Ultimately, the songs from both SPEED RUN and Hearth Room represent the oscillating mood shifts while being worked on simultaneously and the myriad stimulations and emotions that come from daily life in New York. The dual records represent a time capsule of that moment, shorter than a DJ set but perfect for commuting to work or a party, where it’s okay to feel everything at once. “The sound keeps changing because our lives keep getting brought to different settings,” the duo explains."
Frost Children will embark on a lengthy 2024 tour as the headliner and opener. Opening the show with Hearth Room while headlining with SPEED RUN and will feature specific dates with Dorian Electra.
Listen to Hearth Room below:
