Tape Deck Heart is a great album. For a number of people I know, it was the first of Frank Turner’s they listened to – with good reason. The leading song “Recovery” was a massive hit, at least as far as folk-punk is concerned, and that album as a whole is looked at with great fondness not just for the music, which is fun and varied, but also the lyrics which are deeply personal and self-analytical. I would go so far as to say that many consider Tape Deck Heart to be the best Frank Turner album.
But Love Ire & Song is my Frank Turner album.
You know how some albums just seem to come into your life at just the right time?
You know, those albums. The ones with deep sentimental value related to the events going on in your life at the time. For me, Love Ire & Song is one of those albums.
I first discovered Love Ire & Song when I was the soundboard operator for a series of one-acts back in college. His song “Photosynthesis” was one of the tracks in the preshow music, so I was forced to listen to it a lot.
I didn’t mind because by the third playthrough, my thought process was something along the lines of, “damn, this is a bop” or whatever it was we said back in 2013. Shortly thereafter, I picked up the CD of the album “Photosynthesis” was on, which was Love Ire & Song, and spun it several times over the next several years. It was an album that I liked a lot on first listen, especially since I’d never really heard folk-punk before and had little to compare it to, but as 2014 came and went, its contents became embedded in my psyche.
That said, if someone were to tell me Love Ire & Song wasn’t an album they particularly liked, I would understand. It’s an album I love warts and all, and boy does it have some warts.
I always found a couple of songs towards the end of the album kind of forgettable. “St. Cristopher is Coming Home” is a fine song, not bad by any stretch of the definition, but it’s a far cry from some of the highs on the album. At twelve songs and forty-six minutes, Love Ire & Song isn’t a tedious listen, but for one reason or another, I always find myself thinking “oh… it’s not over yet” after “Long Live the Queen,” the ninth track on the record.
There are a couple of songs on here that also jar in a weird way with the sound Frank Turner has managed to cultivate over the years. The title track in particular I had a strong negative reaction to on first listen. It’s an odd track. Given his punk sensibilities, Turner’s music has its share of bitterness and cynicism, but there’s something about the title track that is so cynical and so bitter that it’s offputting.
Having said that, it’s a song I’ve grown to love for its cathartic value and its ultimately hopeful conclusion about yearning for the time when one felt idealistic and believed change would come simpler, easier.
The bookends of this album, “I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous” and “Jet Lag” are also weirdos in their own ways. “Prufrock” is a great intro song, but that’s the thing: it sounds like one long intro. It’s never done more than get me excited to hear other, better songs. On “Jet Lag” Frank just sounds like he needs to get himself to therapy. It’s another song that’s grown on me over the years, but goddamn he sounds so defeated.
It’s a flawed album that I love partly because it’s got some rougher edges on it, the sort of which I think Poetry of the Deed really could have used more of.
Enough of that. Let’s get into what I adore:
There is the aforementioned “Photosynthesis” which is a hell of an anthem about refusing to grow up, and it comes right after “Reasons Not to Be an Idiot,” a song so full of bouncy energy that it never fails to psyche me up when I’m in a blasé mood.
“Better Half” is a plea to the universe to find love, and it pairs nicely with “Substitute”, another love song which I will discuss more later. “Imperfect Tense” is a more straightforward punk tune that sounds a bit like Rise Against if they were British and better at wordplay. “To Take You Home” is a sweet meet-cute song based around a truly enveloping guitar tone that is at once big and twangy. It makes me feel like I’m standing atop a damp green hill, looking over nothing but rolling fields for miles… and maybe some sheep.
The Summer of ‘14
I listened to this album a lot during 2014. That summer especially I will always associate with Love Ire & Song, but two songs in particular brought me great solace during a strange and emotionally complicated time in my life.
The first is “Substitute”, a song that was my primary coping mechanism for romantic troubles I was having. It’s a story that would take much too long to get into the details of, but suffice to say one of my best friends and I were unsure of where exactly we stood with each other, which really messed with my emotions.
“Substitute” is Frank realizing how he throws himself into music because it’s his – as put in the song – “substitute for love.” Given that I had thrown myself body and soul into a play that summer, I felt that message pretty clearly. In the moments when I let myself work on something other than my role, my thoughts would often drift in a painful direction. My artistic pursuits were a way to help me avoid the deep loneliness I was feeling and this song articulated that experience. It raised uncomfortable questions for me, such as: would I even be putting so much effort into artistic endeavors if I were in a stable relationship? I wasn’t sure, and that lack of an answer disturbed me.
With “Substitute”, I felt like I had a kinfellow in Frank. I wasn’t the only one who was wondering if he was driven solely because of loneliness.
And then there’s “Long Live the Queen.”
“Long Live the Queen” is about my uncle.
Not literally, of course. But on an emotional level, this song is about my uncle who, like the subject of the song, was a hard-drinking, cigarette-smoke-covered party guy who always wanted to ensure everyone was having good times even in rough times and had an impish sense of humor. My uncle, like the subject of the song, passed away from cancer. His spirit is all over “Long Live the Queen.” The specifics of him and the person Frank talks about, his friend Lex, are wildly different, but their essences are the same.
My uncle’s funeral was a big party in his backyard, full of loud music, alcohol, laughter, and tears.
The chorus of “Long Live the Queen” could have been words he uttered towards the end of his life: “You’ll live to dance another day,/It’s just now you’ll have to dance for the two of us./So stop looking so damn depressed,/And sing with all your heart that the Queen is dead.”
Every time the chorus comes on I get this tight feeling in my chest. By the last soft, melancholy repetition, pressure pushes against my face. Every damn time. I can’t listen to this song and not feel his essence coming through.
Frank Turner’s music is one of the few overlapping artists my partner and I have in common, and so I always associate her with the album of his I listened to the most, especially during our weird courtship. Which is another way of saying: the romantic troubles referenced above? It all worked out.
So. Love Ire & Song. An odd album from an artist who’s found his artistic voice by this point, but is still in the process of honing it. If you haven’t heard it, you should give it a try. If you’re lukewarm on it, I understand. Since it’s one of those albums for me and there’s no way I can etch my memories into the folds of your brain so its sounds can channel into the deepest crevices of you, maybe it’ll find a series of footholds unique to you to grab onto and use those to burrow in. Or maybe it’ll just reach out for something to grasp only to be slicked off into the memory hole.
I just have my words, and take them for what they are.
Oh, and for the record: Love Ire & Song > England Keep My Bones > Tape Deck Heart.
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