Allez, Allez: Bio for Frank Ene
for his 2023 LP "Cruel à l'amour"
The following is a press bio I wrote for my good friend Frank Ene, one of the most gifted people in music today, for my money. While intended for publicity use only, the Circuit Sweet website elected to print my copy in full to accompany their review, convincing me of its merit as a standalone piece. As you can see, both the personal and professional were mixed up in the writing, anyway.
Needless to say, I recommend both of Ene’s titles mentioned herein unreservedly.
Legend has it Frank Ene cut off all social contact to write his brilliant solo debut No Longer. Well, it’s not a legend. I was there. Seems one minute we were trading notes on leading a band at the bar, the next, no one, not even his best friends, not even his band, knew where he’d gone. He stopped answering the phone. He stopped replying to emails. Texts went to the green bubble. Years later, a song by way of commemoration, “Drown”: “Locked up in my room/An insect to a flame/How can I resist/What lives inside my heart?” After a year like 2020, the outside world inherently knows what it’s like to be in the world of Frank Ene, but the album – lyrically evocative of obsession and isolation, yet finding a transcendence within those confines – would have done the trick by itself. Those in the know upheld it as Album of the Year.
Ene’s solo work is a masterful study in musical self-realization, both of this era and one bygone, but also none at all. It is exclusively his own. The feel of No Longer reflected a deep immersion in the realm of Serge Gainsbourg that leaned on a fragile hip-hop background laced with echoing guitars, as if the ghost of his indie-rock past with Pure Bliss and The Fresh & Onlys was gently fading into the background. New LP Cruel à L’amour, however, has pawned the six-strings outright for Roland Junos and Moogs and vintage drum machines. Ene’s Gainsbourg admiration is again evident, but here he’s moved from Histoire de Melody Nelson to Love on the Beat territory. Recorded and mixed by producer Johnny Goss (La Luz, The Fall of Troy) at his Dandelion Gold studio in Seattle, the sound here is evocative of electro-iconoclasts such as Anna Domino, Dean Blunt and Chromatics. Ene’s distinctive baritone entwines icily with female foil Ola Hungerford’s (Cock & Swan) ethereal soprano, while Goss and the artist provide a reverb-laden buzzing pulse beneath, ever-hypnotic but never dull.
Song-for-song, Ene has proven himself yet again to be one of the most compelling and enigmatic writers of his day, meshing the kabbalistic, yearning verse of Leonard Cohen with the jazzy harmonics of Yellow Magic Orchestra and Giorgio Moroder. Moving away from the previous album’s quarantine vibes, Cruel focuses on its subjects’ intense, almost violent passions, overheard lovers’ spats, ménage à trois and the like; the dark underbelly of love and sex. Over a doomy, descending chord pattern comes the gripping title track that opens the record – “I was there in your bedroom/You were fair, lilacs in bloom/Then you showed me the door/Honestly, honestly, you’re cruel à l’amour” Obvious single “I Always Meant to Do You Harm” might raise a few eyebrows with the title, but its undeniable groove and melodic plaintiveness make for a dancefloor classic that you could equally gyrate or weep to, to say nothing of the lyrics, an ice-cold kiss-off to a jilted lover: “To say that you could save me makes no sense/You know what, baby?/You never meant that much to me/All I can say is that I always meant to do you harm.” Even more risqué may be the similarly infectious “Kill Me Bébé,” where it will possibly be the guiltiest pleasure of this year to hear Hungerford cry, “Kill me, kill me, kill me, kill me, kill me baby,” while Ene whispers, “…if you love me, baby.” On one of the record’s several bi-lingual excursions, “La Poussée,” a sexy groove underpins a call-and-response between the singers, as Ene depicts “An abuse of self-control/pas tout à fait/If you’re queer, than I am too.”
Pressed by your humble author for a list of inspirations, Ene replies, somewhat exasperated, “Rage, alcohol, nicotine, grief, squalor, mental chaos, nothingness.” Nothing but the classics, then. But really, music is a life-force rather than a genre game for Frank Ene – just the way it should be. “I go into this without any ROI in mind. I just have to do it,” he says. “It’s critical to my existence.” It’s that kind of intensity and commitment to his craft that makes Cruel à L’amour such a vital piece of work, and further evidence of Ene’s idiosyncratic genius and virtuosity.