Something happens when you listen to Frog. The New York hotshots make the world feel like a place that was put together after a few beers by a shambolic but benign deity. They make you think you still live in a golden age of American indie, where there’s a record shop on every corner and a special new band perpetually launching an album in every record shop. They make you feel connected to a real and thrilling and personally curated scene, even when you’re on a different continent.
As I noted in my review of last year’s 1000 Variations on the Same Song, it’s like nostalgia, only keener, and it’s raw and addictive. It’s weird, too, because, for UK listeners at least, the entity known as Frog exists almost entirely online. Sure, they release vinyl and the occasional tape, but who can afford the shipping costs these days? And it’s not like there are endless European tours (though they will be playing a rare London show later this year). Furthermore, they write about a world that is essentially unknown. These songs, presumably, strike you differently depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re listening on. Not necessarily different in terms of what they mean, but certainly in how they feel. I’ve never been to any of the locales they sing about – upstate NY, downtown NY, and all mysterious points in between – but Frog’s music creates an atmosphere that means I can know those places, even if my knowing is not the same as the knowing of someone who lives there. It’s to their immense credit that they can make their strange and highly specific little songs seem refreshingly universal.
The Bateman brothers – multi-instrumentalist/songwriter/frontman Daniel and drummer Steve – are on a roll at the moment: this will be their fourth album since Grog, which came out two and a half years ago, and their eighth in total. In the past, they have taken inspiration from midwestern emo, Irish folk, classic hip-hop, country, soul, and about a hundred other things besides. So when they say that their influences on Frog For Sale are Buddy Holly and Paul McCartney, you might expect that there’s more to it than that. And you’d be right. Whatever angle they’re pushing, Frog always sound entirely and convincingly like themselves. On recent single Dark Out, one of Frog For Sale’s many highlights, the McCartney influence is palpable in the way the plonking piano chords uphold a memorable but deceptively complex vocal melody, but the boys also manage to pull together strands of Motown and The Band. Je Ne Sais Pas, the first song from the album to be released, begins like a DIY Steely Dan and careers along somewhere between jazz-rock and folk-pop. Again, the piano is prevalent, and there’s a distinctly 70s feel. It’s not quite Supertramp, but Billy Joel looms large.
Daniel Bateman has always had a knack for titles. Either a song sounds how its name suggests it’s going to sound, or else it leaves room for any number of unexpected oddball references. Opener Bad Time to Fall in Love Again is one of the former, full of warbling, yearning vocals (the Buddy Holly influence) and shuffly programmed percussion, it’s a lo-fi update of lovelorn late-50s rock’n’roll. The wonderfully/excruciatingly punny Max von Side-Eye is an example of the latter, where Daniel’s world-weary wordsmithery is accompanied by an irresistible, almost joyous melodicism.
These juxtapositions appear everywhere. Best Buy sets a wavering organ against a near-tropical beat that somehow works perfectly with the suburban minutiae of the lyrics. Stole My Heart has an almost childlike simplicity, with its charming one-finger keyboard motif and minimal guitar solo, but it deals in real, adult emotions. Daniel’s voice, always ready to jump into a pained falsetto, reaches new heights of emotion on Lois Lane, but only after dropping into shaky spoken word for a few confessional moments.
It’s not hard to see where those juxtapositions and contradictions come from. Frog For Sale is about love and money, those two great and contradictory forces that lie behind so much art, particularly the art of American rock’n’roll. They bring about heartbreak and hope in (roughly) equal measure, and often at the same time. And they’re there even in the wordless ‘da-da-da’s in the intro of All The Things You Get, a gloriously messy bar-room blitz that sounds like a hangover waiting to happen.
There are moments that sound like sonic palate cleansers: Professional is gentle, soulful pop, while the brisk country strum of Yonder This Way Comes is refreshing and accessible. But even here the song’s narrators are out in the cold, romantically speaking: ‘all dressed up, nowhere to fuck.’ Closer Beg, Borrow, Steal works up a winning boogie in the service of lyrics which, if you listen closely, are characterised by a kind of unfulfilled, sad braggadocio.
Frog have always been brilliant at exposing the emptiness and hollowness at the heart of things, and filling it up, at least temporarily, with their own brand of heartfelt Americana. Eight albums in, and that continues to be the case. Frog For Sale, with its Beatle-baiting title and condensed, pining, piano-oriented sound, is a welcome hit of literate indie wistfulness from one of America’s most consistently impressive bands.
Frog for Sale (April 17th, 2026) Audio Antihero
Bandcamp: https://heyitsfrog.bandcamp.com/album/frog-for-sale
Live Dates
Apr. 17, 2026 – Elsewhere, Brooklyn, NY
Apr. 18, 2026 – United Parish Brookline, Brookline, MA
Apr. 19, 2026 – Underground Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Apr. 20, 2026 – Black Cat, Washington, DC
Apr. 22, 2026 – Cannery Hall, Nashville, TN
Apr. 23, 2026 – Thalia Hall, Chicago, IL
Apr. 24, 2026 – Grog Shop, Cleveland, OH
Apr. 25, 2026 – West Art, Lancaster, PA
Sep. 19, 2026 – Oslo, Hackney, London, UK
Tickets: https://frog.band/shows