THE Frank & Walters Grand Parade Tour 2017 will see them arrive at Dublin’s The Academy on Friday, December 22.
In 1997, five years after the release of their debut album, The Frank & Walters returned with what many fans fondly remember as
the pinacle of Irish indie during the 90s – ‘Grand Parade’.
Named after a street in the band’s hometown of Cork – “a place where we saw our first movie, our first gig and got drunk for the first time” – Grand Parade delivered more of the perfect indie pop the Franks had forged their reputation with, while showing the three-piece had more to their canon than earlier suspected by the influential music press of the time.
The NME wrote of its release: “The Frank & Walters might be slightly more muscular and marginally less barmy than before, but that doesn’t mean they’re about to relinquish their grip on the simplest of choruses, the sneakiest of guitar solos or the jauntiest of melodic joys.”
Opening the album is the bona fide classic ‘Colours’, and Grand Parade went on to deliver tracks that become Frank & Walters’ classics, with the likes of ‘Indian Ocean’ and ‘How Can I Exist’ still figuring on set lists today and sung along to by entire audiences. The album also dispensed with the myth that the Franks were a band set on solely writing instant pop gems, with a thoroughly more thoughtful and introspective atmosphere on tracks such as ‘Little Dolls’ and ‘Lately’.
Born into the music media frenzy that was Britpop, The Frank & Walters cemented their place in indie music annals with Grand Parade. And despite being released in a year where a huge groundswell of UK bands emerged and era-defining records were being released, the album was rightly recognised by critics as a unique body of work and cemented the Franks’ place at the top table of indie pop for
the subsequent two decades.
Now, in 2017, The Frank & Walters are set to take Grand Parade on the road for a 20th anniversary tour that will bring one of the diamonds of Irish music to fans across the UK and Ireland. In the meantime, the band have released five excellent studio albums (the most recent being 2016’s ‘Songs for the Walking Wounded’) and have continued to break new ground and inspire a whole new generation of fans.
The set list on the tour will include an array of stunning singles including ‘After All’, ‘Indie Love Song’ and ‘We Are The Young Men’), and of course, will feature ‘Grand Parade’ played in its entirety.