Not all too much is known about The Kings of Frog Island – they remain as mysterious to this writer as the beetle-riding frog ruler on their new album’s cover art. So mysterious are they that their sixth album is being mislabeled all over the internet as The Kings of Frog Island, Vol. I, including Spotify and Apple Music, despite its title being, quite naturally, The Kings of Frog Island VI (it’s right there in the frog’s medallion on the album cover guys, come on).
Hailing from Leiscester, England, and taking their name from an inner-city area there, the band has been operating since 2003, with a shifting collective of members popping in and out of their other, primary projects. Producer and guitarist Mark Buteux and Scum Pups’ Roger Watson are the longest, and only, consistent members over their 17 years.
Kings of Frog Island’s music has never quite broken through to a wide fanbase, and it’s not all too hard to see why: their personal brand of chilled-out stoner rock, slowing the genre’s more frenetic tendencies down to an often easy-going lull, is intended for a very specific niche of listeners. This only serves to make their music all the more valuable for those proud few to whom it speaks most readily.
Yet, this isn’t to say the music found on VI will only appeal to some. It’s a new level of achievement for the band: they’ve spent a career reaching this moment, that space in time within which the mastery of their specific craft is so fine-tuned, so deeply understood by its performers, that they can cross over into wide-appeal.
They’ve taken their time getting there. Their last album, V, arrived in 2014, and beginning the following year, even as collaborators came and went, they’ve been consistently recording and fine-tuning this perfected statement.
The results are often transcendent. “Toxic Heart” boasts a melancholy, drifting riff that’d make The Cure envious, while “Pigs in Space”, which immediately follows it, charges into more rollicking territory with its propulsive, steady drum beat and fuzzy guitars. “Bad Trip” is anything but, another gentle salvo of grooves and generous good times. It’s never a dull ride, with the band knowing just when to liven things up and when to lean into their tendency for quieter moments – and it nonetheless would be sure to pack a mosh-pit.
Female vocals (I believe by one Lee Madel-Toner, but honestly, that’s how little I’m able to find out for certain about this LP), peppered throughout VI, add a valuable layer to the more blunt lead vocals, bringing an ethereal, near FKA-Twigs-if-she-made-stoner-rock level of refinement to “Ever and Forever”, “Murder”, and album closer “Fine”.
With its laser-like focus, right on down to its gloriously ridiculous cover art, VI is a triumph, but The Kings of Frog Island are still unlikely to be headlining festivals any time soon. Yet, for those that are lucky enough to discover their sequestered, little magical island, VI offers the very best of times. The sort of album intended for isolation long before it was all but required of us, this is a long-considered, carefully arranged, and precisely delivered work that is all the more rewarding in our pandemic-ridden reality. VI is music meant for reflective headphone listening, perfect for long, lonesome walks home at night, glimpsing the faces of strangers – them entirely unaware you’re lost in a pleasant world of amphibian warlords and tangy green smoke. As tired as the phrase may be, The Kings of Frog Island VI, is genuinely that rarest of things: a murky diamond in the rough.
