The crowd is dressed to enjoy the night; well shod and dressed down in its best casual wear, though some were in their still crisp office clothes. Eager to escape into the weekend, The Fray?s middle class fans are young and female, with boyfriends or girl gang in tow. The air reeked of adult contemporary; no wallet chains, tattoos, or body piercings here. Only one out of seven were clad in all black. The rest splashed in color or in leopard prints so popular nowadays.
The Fray?s fans were polite and well-mannered. Among them was actor and model Cristine Reyes, who I?d later see happily waving a glow stick, front row center. ?
A sigh escapes at the sight of lines of interlocked folding chairs in the middle of the venue; no mosh pits or instant fights here unlike some other gigs. This Saturday was going to be a chillaxed one.
Warming up the crowd was front act Moonstar 88, with their girl-angst-meets-romantic-longing songs played with that right torch pitch. Singer Maychelle Baay engaged the crowd with light banter, but generally just seemed to enjoy playing the coliseum. Their mid-2000 hits like ?Panalangin? and their version of Yano?s ?Senti? came across quite well, as it whet the appetites without being too clever or hogging the spotlight.?? ?
If you?ve been watching any kind of TV during the mid or late 2000s, then The Fray will be instantly familiar as the band that achieved commercial prominence with the 2005 debut album, ?How to Save a Life.?
Yes, they are responsible for the theme song of that medical drama show. Thanks to that and the use of their songs on other programs, they climbed the Billboard Top 40 charts in early 2006, and that album became a certified double-platinum LP in the US.
Currently composed of Isaac Slade (piano and vocals), Joe King (guitars and vocals), Dave Welsh (guitars) and Ben Wysocki (drums), the Denver-based band has certainly come a long way when they first got together in 2003. Back then, former schoolmates Slade and King had bumped into each other at a local music store before deciding to join forces and parlay their love of U2, The Wallflowers, and Counting Crows into the kind of emotive music that has propelled them to Asia, and now to Manila.
While The Fray has sometimes balked at comparisons to Coldplay, Snow Patrol, Keane, and The Script, these are their contemporaries and an adherence to the same mind set doesn?t automatically mean a write off.
When the band came on and opened with ?All at Once,? followed with ?You Found Me? and ?Turn Me On? it?s apparent that when Bono and U2 were harping about Marthin Luther King, Ireland and streets with no name, The Fray took note of the core melodic gist and owned it. Hence, the chiming guitars that make spirits soar and crushes doubts, sans The Edge?s delay sparkle, of course.
Where the other bands might sing about politics and the plight of minorities, or about fantasy lands known only to a few, The Fray are about life?s intimate spaces. It?s the melancholy found in distance, the frustration and misery that comes with the isolation and dislocation of lives cut off from each other by a city?s walls.
Be that as it may, the songs have an arena-crafted punch, especially the newer material.? ?The Fighter? has a chorus that?s easy to love; ?Munich? soars with its given-to-fly aesthetic; and ?Heartbeat? builds up to and births total appreciation.
Their newest LP ?Scars and Stories? is a joy to hear live. We have Brendan O'Brien, the producer who came to fame by helming albums by the Stone Temple Pilots and Pearl Jam, to thank for that. The Fray has never sounded better. They have never sounded bigger, in fact.? Thanks to Rwanda and Germany as well as the trips the band took to these places inspired the new album.
However, the danger in a Fray?s live show is that the songs are mid-tempo or even slower ballad pieces. A dolorous set is a real hazard. There is some precision necessary in choosing which songs go where in order for there to be a build-up. Otherwise, the audience might end up dozing on its feet.
The Fray did veer dangerously close to it in their Manila show. But then Isaac Slade saved the day as he galvanized the crowd by stepping off the stage and into the front row, his bald head shining under the kliegs.
He even managed to string together the de rigueur Tagalog words, ?Kumusta, Manila?? and ?Mabuhay!? among them. And everyone loved it, as usual.
However, Slade really is a great frontman with equally talented band mates. He knows when to push and when to let his band mates shine. He has an intuitive grasp of timing, when to push a song to its intense conclusion, or simply when to just play his piano.
By the time they got to their hits ?How to Save a Life,? ?Over My Head (Cable Car)? and the newest single ?Heartbeat?, it was getting late into the night so it was a good thing they?d saved the best for last.
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The Fray is staunchly in that class of songwriters who are comfortable being what they are and make no bones about it. That they prefer to defend their kingdom rather than stake out new sonic ground isn?t a bad thing at all. It?s what their fans also like that about them.
They may not be a challenging listen for someone used to harder music played very fast or very, very slow with polyrhythmic virtuosity, but they are righteously pro-melody, an open arms approach to the weary, the lonely, the hurt who need their spirits to hope and soar.
When they closed with ?Surrender,? everyone at the coliseum was up in the rafters, carried high by a piano-driven high wind. They saved some lives that night, no doubt. ? DVM, GMA News
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