{"id":388281,"date":"2026-04-20T05:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T05:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/388281\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T05:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T05:45:09","slug":"frog-frog-for-sale-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/388281\/","title":{"rendered":"Frog: Frog for Sale Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

For years now, Frog<\/a> bandleader Daniel Bateman has cited Mozart, Charlie Parker, and Lil Wayne as his biggest influences. The commonality between those three is their extremely prolific output, which he likens to an addiction. \u201cOnce you get into a place like that, where you can\u2019t stop, that\u2019s when amazing things can happen,\u201d Bateman told KEXP<\/a>. Frog for Sale is his band\u2019s eighth album overall and third full-length in just 14 months. While it continues Frog\u2019s recent Americana tear, the album\u2019s liveliness speaks to the process of compulsive creation as a freeing experience, especially when the creator is aware that it\u2019s not the best work of their career. The tradeoff is more room to experiment, trust in instincts, and learning through trying.<\/p>\n

Where 2025\u2019s 1000 Variations on the Same Song<\/a> played with funk undercurrents and The Count leaned toward slower R&B, Frog for Sale is an exercise in cabaret basics. On opener \u201cBad Time to Fall in Love Again,\u201d Daniel Bateman jumps from piano to bass and guitar, while his brother, Steve Bateman, adds chimes and woodblocks to his percussion arsenal. The duo is strongest when combining that natural swing with the keys; it\u2019s easy to imagine Bateman tipping a top hat and cane like Michigan J. Frog<\/a> while singing \u201cMax Von Side-Eye\u201d or \u201cAll the Things You Get\u201d on a theater\u2019s stage, lost in the bounce of each beat. He\u2019s got a natural instinct for showmanship while manning the piano; it\u2019s as if sitting on that bench is the secret to perfect posture and unending vocal melodies. If only he gave himself more space to trapeze, though, given the dullness of the hooks elsewhere on the album.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a certain admirability to Frog\u2019s cadence as of late. Evading the pressures of living up to past work is a lifelong struggle for some artists, hence writer\u2019s block or scrapped tracklists that turn into discography lapses. If perfect is the enemy of good, then releasing middling attempts is an acknowledgement that artists must push past their mediocre ideas to uncover the gems that lay ahead. Even songwriting\u2019s most heralded giants with extensive discographies can testify: Stevie Wonder<\/a> diluted a Ghana trip into the thin Conversation Peace, Joni Mitchell<\/a> lost herself executing a grand concept in Mingus<\/a>, and even Paul McCartney<\/a> fumbled a classical album about a Celtic man pondering existentialism and ambient techno loops with near-indiscernible changes on Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest. Not every song can be polished aggressively enough to sparkle.<\/p>\n

Getting ideas out of your system to make room for the next potential goldrush doesn\u2019t have to be a slog, or even viewed in a binary of good versus bad. Frog for Sale\u2019s most underwhelming tracks still know the worth of a wry one-liner: The blunt-verging-on-uncomfortable horniness of the protagonist in \u201cBest Buy\u201d earns a laugh with \u201cAll good singers purchase Zyns at the 7-11 in the tins,\u201d as does the self-deprecation in the plodding \u201cProfessional,\u201d where Bateman concedes \u201cGirl, yes, I\u2019m paid to be bad\u201d before coughing up his band\u2019s name \u201clike the amphibian.\u201d Later, he gets inventive by replicating trumpets using only his lips on \u201cBeg, Borrow, Steal.\u201d Often, his simplest impulses are the most immediately striking, like the acoustic \u201cYonder This Way Comes.\u201d Hearing Bateman sing with urgency about longing in the sub-two-minute song makes you glad he grabbed a guitar whenever it popped into his head, preserving an idea without overthinking it. In addition to honing his craft, Bateman works as a set decorator and is a father of two, and you get the sense the act of songwriting is becoming as important to him as the songs themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For years now, Frog bandleader Daniel Bateman has cited Mozart, Charlie Parker, and Lil Wayne as his biggest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[4958,156,157,111,139,69,1251],"class_list":{"0":"post-388281","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-albums","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-web"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}