Cage Tropical is the sixth solo release from Frankie Rose. She’s a musician with a lot of depth and this release is brimming with ideas. It’s a pop album that’s demanding of the listener and you won’t get the full experience unless you devote your full attention to it. It isn’t an abrasive listen by any means, but Frankie Rose’s warm vocal are coated with electronics that escort the listener through Cage Tropical.

There are familiar pop traits on the album, such as the drum beats and the song construction. These are used as a foundation for Frankie Rose to explore various influences. As the album develops the influences shift slightly. The first half appears to have an 80s new wave vibe to it on tracks like ‘Dyson Sphere’ but, by the time we reach the second half, that sound fades away and things get a little more experimental with the electronics. It applies all these ideas and influences to the ‘pop’ template, hitting each mark where expected. The songs are all constructed in a very traditional sense but, in terms of how they’re produced, you won’t be getting a straight-up pop album.

How Cage Tropical feels is something that’ll be different for each listener. It’s something I found to be incredibly warm and calming, although I’m not sure if I was supposed to. When the big pop chorus hits, it hits for sure but to me I found it to be more of a gentle hit than I expected. Its subtlety allows it to pull off all of these ideas without the album ever feeling cluttered.

There isn’t a song on Cage Tropical that feels out of place or sounds like it should be placed differently in the track listing. Each track flows into the other and as new ideas and sounds are presented it sounds organic. The first half has the more immediate stand-out tracks such as ‘Trouble’. It then evolves into something a little bit more experimental and dream-like in ‘Dancing Down the Hall’. Considering how many different ideas the songs juggle about, the album is put together in a way where all these ideas make sense and flow very naturally.

What I do really love about Cage Tropical is that it’s an album full of details. There are some specific and very slight touches that really stand-out such as the guitar on ‘Cage Tropical’. Unexpectedly, a lot of these details do come from the guitars. None of these are immediately clear as it’s predominantly a synth-led album but there are some really great moments on the guitar that give the songs so much more depth, taking it beyond being a standard pop album.

Cage Tropical, like so many good albums, won’t work its magic on you for the first few listens. The music is very rich and once you get to know the songs they reveal themselves fully. I’ve really grown to appreciate the album the more I’ve heard it but at first it didn’t make a huge mark on me. There are songs which I didn’t quite get at first that have since become my favourites. It’s an album that will require your full attention as it won’t seek to grab it immediately. It’s a tricky one to digest at first but, once you do, it will reward you and you’ll have a different experience each time.

Chris Middleton

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