Frente Remember The Album That Changed Australian Music

Still in high school and an aspiring actor aged 17, in 1989 Angie Hart joined guitarist Simon Austin, bass player Tom O'Connor and drummer Mark Picton in a band the trio had formed in Melbourne with a funny name, Frente, which apparently was Spanish for “forehead”. There was no grand plan – just a shared love of quirky pop that, as it turned out struck a chord with a generation that wasn't necessarily jumping on the emerging grunge scene.

Within two years of constant gigging in and around their hometown, Frente had released their first independent EP, Whirled, the lead track from which, Labour Of Love, got them a #69 placing in the 1991 triple j Hottest 100. That peaked the interest of Michael Gudinski, who signed them to his indie/alternative label, White Music, and released their next EP, Clunk, in April 1992 and that EP's lead single, Ordinary Angels, took Frente to #3 in the ARIA single chart and scored them a platinum record.

The second single off that EP, Accidently Kelly Street, also got to #3. So the next obvious step, of course, was the debut album, and in December 1992, Marvin The Album duly arrived (it was released April 1994 in the US), reaching #1 on the independent and #4 on the national mainstream album charts, and sold 70,000+ copies, giving them platinum album and launching them on the international stage, signing to Mammoth Records in the US and Mushroom in Europe, and, over the following three years, multiple tours to North America, through Mexico and Latin America, and even more tours through South East Asia and Japan and Europe. Their cover of Bizarre Love Triangle even got them to #10 on the US Billboard Modern Rock Chart.

Beginning today and over the following three weeks, Simon Austin and Angie Hart will take you through each of those three releases, beginning with their track-by-track observations on Marvin The Album, as The Music celebrates the album's 21st anniversary, which is being marked by the double-CD remastered reissue of the album and EPs, with bonus tracks, by Festival/Warner Music Australia. And the album title?

“All albums have a title,” says Angie Hart, “or they are self-titled, after the band who made them. Not many albums get named. We felt that our debut album, our first-born issue, should have a name. So, we called it Marvin The Album. There was no particular Marvin in mind when we came up with this. We just wanted it to be unique and slightly uncool; like us.”

Stay tuned for track-by-tracks of the Whirled and Clunk EPs.

Marvin The Album – track by track

Disc 1 of the 2014 reissue

1) Girl (Angie Hart)

Angie: I remember holing up for pre-production, in a studio at the old 3PBS offices in St Kilda. We never did well when we actually tried to write a song. As soon as we turned our backs on the process, there it would be... the thing we were looking for all along. Girl happened this way.

2) Accidently Kelly Street (Tim O'Connor)

Angie: The mis-spelling was deemed by some a genius stroke. Unfortunately, it was not intentional on my part, but I quietly took the credit for years.

Simon: The perfect pop craft of Tim O'Connor – An undeniable hit song, it was all over the radio for weeks, sweet and sure against the Pacific Northwest snarl and doof doof cuppa-tea. Some of the sourest people I know and love took me to task but you could see they couldn't help singing it as they railed. I would nod, smile, press their shoulders.

3) Most Beautiful (Simon Austin/Angie Hart)

Angie: This song to me has hidden powers. I don't know how we made it this way, but it sounds like there are twenty of us, every time we play it. It is most beautiful in every way.

Simon: One of my favourites. We programmed the sequencer with an “attempt to escape sounding like Do You Know The Way To San Jose” pattern and nearly made it through the wire.

4) No Time (Tim O'Connor)

Angie: Perhaps the debut of the word 'toast' in a song. A non-sentimental and unflinching look at the end of lust and the doorstep to the mundane.

Simon: Tim is an astute observer of the beauty – as in Kelly Street – and here the numb terror of the quotidian. The chords proceed in a sort of surprised inevitability, holding the sentiment perfectly. Great fun to play.

5) Cuscatlan (Simon Austin)

Angie: I will always admire Simon for writing this song. It is so heartfelt, so sincere, and so badass.

Simon: One day I will play the solo all the way to the end.

6) Pretty Friend (Tim O'Connor)

Angie: Ouch. This song has spikes, I tell you. A torch song for underdog.

Simon: Everyone knows this person, keep the conversation light and orient your body towards the door. 

7) 1.9.0 (Mark Picton)

Angie: We are often asked what the numbers stand for. I cannot remember. Simon?

Simon: I never wanted to ask Mark – there are no questions in Jazz.

8) Reflect (Mark Picton)

Angie: Very much a taste of what we sounded like live, in the beginning. It takes me back to the milk crates backstage, the parachuted ceiling of the stage at The Punters Club, and the dirty beer keg pipes that made your drink taste like socks.

Simon: I always feel like I'm listening to a very private end-of-relationship conversation and I shouldn't be. But I'm living in a share house in Richmond in 1989 and am completely friendless and poverty-stricken so have to stay home sitting on the sofa we found in the street and pretend to read an old InPress. Remember to smile innocently when they come out of the bedroom sobbing.

9) Out Of My Sight (Mark Picton)

Angie: Mark's unique melodies in songwriting are never more present than in this song; he and Tim, working the rhythm section into the light and back to the shade, ever so subtly. You can't recreate these moments.

Simon: These are the least amount of notes I have played in any Frente! song. I wish there were more songs like it.

10) See/Believe (Simon Austin/Tim O'Connor)

Angie: So angular, so jaunty, such fun. I loved playing this song live. One of our first ventures into minimal, call-and-answer songs.

Simon: Great fun. Live music in small noisy pubs, can't beat it.

11) Labour Of Love [album version] (Simon Austin/Angie Hart)

Angie: I guess you could say that this song was the beginning for Frente! Simon had almost finished this tale of unrequited love, when he handed it over to me. We began our songwriting collaboration here. I am ever grateful.

Simon: It took years to get it to the point from where we finished it in five minutes. You meet someone and fall for the story you make up about them. 

12) Ordinary Angels [album version] (Simon Austin/Angie Hart)

Angie: All I ever talk about, when mentioning this song, is how it was born out of a fight. It's true, and I think that it's a humbling vision. The lotus out of the mud, or how to be human, step one.

Simon: I'm most proud of this song. The idea came very quickly and then we polished and polished the lyrics till we could see our faces in them. Daniel Denholm (producer) in his wisdom wouldn't let me near the console or the computer when we were recording it, he just kept us distracted and made the track out of nothing. We layered and layered guitars, Ang did a warm-up take and then nailed what you hear.

13) Dangerous (Simon Austin)

Angie: We used to play this song at break-neck speed, until we were breathless and without a consonant in sight. We were younger then.

Simon: Younger and unselfconscious. I laugh at – and love – the naiveté, the earnest preaching. But when you are young and in a band you just know how the world should be arranged.

14) Lonely (Simon Austin/Angie Hart) (bonus track)

Angie: The first in a new direction for us, so we felt it was key to bringing our international audience along with us. We stopped smiling in our clips and photos and adopted a more spacious sound. A statement at the toll that constant touring was taking on us.

Simon: Ang cleverly wrote this without an instrument and we added the band. It has a lie-to-yourself verse and a lie-in-the-sun chorus.

15) Explode (Simon Austin/Angie Hart) (bonus track)

Angie: “This is not my skin/I was invited in” – Transformation and alienation.

Simon: This doesn't quite work – but it's an accurate portrait of a band living in London, surrounded by “serious” music and important people. No confidence. Writing songs like this to try to fit in. We only found out later that the British are all chancers. We should have been pouring beer and outraged abuse on them. They respect that.

16) Bizarre Love Triangle (New Order) (bonus track)

Angie: An unassuming cover of a song that we both adored, gave us radio coverage and set the band onto stages around world. It was a b-side.

Simon: My favourite song from my favourite band.

(The last three tracks were included on the US/UK/European version of the album, from which 1.9.0 and Out Of My Sight were excluded.)