#Frankie Broyles

[sinceileftyoublog]

Omni Album Review: Souvenir

(Sub Pop)

BY JORDAN MAINZER

On their fourth album Souvenir, Atlanta post-punk trio Omni don't necessarily sound like a new band, but they're certainly reinvigorated. From 2016 to 2019, they released three records, including their Sub Pop debut full-length Networker. Five years later, with some time to think, writer, record, and mull over next steps, Omni have given us their first record on which any song could be a single, each managing to worm its way into your ear while still defying expectations.

For one, Omni has refined their aesthetic. Singer and bassist Philip Frobos went into the recording of Souvenir inspired by the gentle, melodically droll singing of his favorite college rock frontpeople. Engineer Kristofer Sampson, working with the band for the first time, placed Frobos' voice higher in the mix than on past albums, increasingly emphasizing the songs' obtuse lyrics that fittingly contrast the acuteness of the instrumentation. Drummer Chris Yonker joined Omni full-time, offering cutting precision on "Exacto" (no pun intended), skittering flourishes on "Common Mistakes", and disco grooves on "Verdict". And vocalist Izzy Glaudini of L.A. no wavers Automatic joins on three tracks, harmonizing and engaging in absurdist chants with Frobos.

Two tracks on Souvenir stand out not for necessarily being catchier or better than the others, but for the extent to which they exemplify Omni's essence. On opening track "Exacto", Frobos sings, "Exacto, de facto, concise, quite right," as if to create a mantra, but later defies the band's facetiously robotic tendencies with dry jokes and sprinkling effects. "I'll love you like the first night / For the rest of our lives / Mr. Big Shot always forgets to introduce his wife," he jokes. On "INTL Waters", he asks, "Why follow the rules like everybody else?", the band eventually interrupting the song's established light piano and wiry bass with brash, staccato percussion and Frankie Broyles' buoyant lead guitars. Whether Omni's settled into a treadmill or strayed from their defined formula, they're effective satirists of the everyday.

The songs on Souvenir certainly don't tell stories, per se, but they find the pathos in individual moments. Two people in a fraying relationship get mugged on "PG", as Frobos looks on the bright side: "You know I never minded the taste of blood." They find their inner grump on the wincing "To Be Rude", Frobos crooning over Broyles' scraggly guitars, "Excuse me ma'am / What's in your decanter? Mezcal and endless banter." And then there's closer "Compliment", a post-modern collection of anxieties about the economy, self-image, and artistic integrity. "It's nothing new / I'm guilty of it, too / Looking at someone else's life / Thinking, hey man, that looks nice," Frobos shrugs. When Omni is thoroughly enjoying observing everyday life, who can fault them for finding inspiration in what's right in front of them?

[senorboombastic]

A 'Souvenir' - Listen to the third episode of ’60 Minutes or less’, the new podcast from Birthday Cake For Breakfast, featuring Philip Frobos of Omni!

Words: Andy Hughes In case you missed it, to kick off 2024, Birthday Cake For Breakfast has entered the podcast game (better late than never, eh?) Following on from our first two episodes (featuring Joe Casey of Protomartyr and Paul Hanley of The Fall), it’s a delight to say that our guest for our third episode is Philip Frobos, bassist and vocalist in Atlanta, Georgia outfit Omni! We first…

[dustedmagazine]

Omni — Souvenir (Sub Pop)

Photo by Gem Hale

Omni, now four albums in, arches an eyebrow at post-punk. It makes its songs out of an erector set of sharp, shiny guitar parts but leaves the bolts loose, poised to collapse into a clanging pile. Yet lush melodies drape over this rickety architecture, florid sung lines, viscous patters of bass, unexpectedly lyrical swoons of guitar. Brittle cleverness dips unpredictably into unreconstructed romanticism, sarcasm gives way to boy-misses-girl sentiment. The trio—as always Philip Frobos on vox and bass, Frankie Broyles on guitar and Chris Yonker on antic drums—hasn’t exactly softened their edges, just laid a bit of velvet on them.

As a result, there’s something very pop about “Plastic Pyramid,” the song that eavesdrops on Frobos’ super-sexy call and response with Automatic’s Izzy Glaudini (“Are you hydrated baby?” “What are you, a tall drink of water?” etc.). Sure the band tackles the ever-punk topic of consumerism but does so from a soft bed of longing. “Unbox paradise,” stutters Frobos, as his bass pumps up the dance vibe, and he doesn’t sound entirely averse to the process.

“Exacto,” likewise, jitters and freeze frames like a robot at the disco, a steady pulse of bass and rigid, rectilinear structures of drums. But hold on a second, it also pauses for lyrical intervals. “I love you like the first night, for the rest of our lives,” croons Frobos, close to falsetto and very much on the make. Then he undercuts the suavity with an acerbic observation, “Mr. Big Shot always forgets to introduce his wife.”

The word play is often clever in a not-trying-too-hard fashion; you can almost hear the private school drawl in cuts like “F1”which crams multiple photography metaphors into lines about excising people from lives and memories (and snapshots). “You were cropped out of the photo from that long weekend, passed out by the pool, overexposed again,” Frobos rattles off, then comes in for the kicker, “How should I frame this?” It’s good, arch fun, but a little smarmy.

Listening to Souvenir, I can’t help but think of Stuck, the Chicago post-punk-into-no-wave outfits that sometimes refers to itself as “evil Omni.” That’s a funny way to say that it cranks the slashing guitars, the yelps of outrage, the banging drums about three notches tighter than the Atlanta trio. Comparing the two, you might begin to wonder if there’s anything solid behind Omni’s detached cleverness, it’s super clean, super manicured attack. Maybe regular Omni could benefit from a touch of evil. 

Jennifer Kelly

[burlveneer-music]

Omni - Souvenir - "wiry melodies" indeed ;)

The music of Atlanta trio Omni has always swung fast and hit hard. And Souvenir, their fourth album and second for Sub Pop, packs their biggest punch yet. Inactive during the majority of the pandemic–the longest downtime in their history–they approached this recording with lots of pent-up energy. Guitarist Frankie Broyles, singer/bassist Philip Frobos, and drummer Chris Yonker converted their creative fuel into sharp, driving songs that land immediately, sporting chopping riffs, staccato beats, and wiry melodies.

[screamingforyears]

IN_A_MINUTE: // AN INDIE EXPRESS…

@jpblues is here w/ “LIFE IS,” the lead single/track from her forthcoming LP titled ‘Here in the Pitch’ (5/3 @mexican_summer) & it finds the LA-based artist, rounded out here by Al Carlson, Matt McDermott, Spencer Zahn, Mauro Refosco, Ryley Walker, Peter Mudge & Alex Goldberg climbing “back on the horse before it gets dark” across 3 mins of retro-dipped, aesthetically apt & bitterly melancholic IndiePop.

“BEHIND YOUR EAR” is the final single in the run-up to @latebloomernc’s forthcoming LP titled ‘Another One Again’ (3/1 @deadbrokerekerds @selfawarerecords) & it finds the Charlotte-based trio of Josh (bass), Neil (guitar) & Scott (drums) power_popping their way across a compact 2:41 clip of charged up CollegeRawk.

“BILLOW” is the latest single from @meatbodiesofficialauthentic’s forthcoming LP titled ‘Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom’ (3/8 @intheredrecords) & it finds the Los Angeles-based quartet stone_rosing their way across 4 ½ mins of shimmy-shaking, righteously riffed & psych-tinged AltRawk.

@omnideluxe are here w/ “COMPLIMENT,” the final single in the run-up to their forthcoming LP titled ‘Souvenir’ (2/16 @subpop) & it finds the ATL-based trio of guitarist Frankie Broyles, singer/bassist Philip Frobos & drummer Chris Yonker post_punking across a sub-4 min slice of southernly twanged NewWave.

“THE LIGHT” is the lead single from @parsnip_hq’s forthcoming LP titled ‘Behold’ (4/26 @antifaderecords@upset_the_rhythm) & it finds the Melbourne-based quartet of bassist/vocalist Paris Richens, drummer Carolyn Hawkins, guitarist/saxophonist/vocalist Stella Rennex & keyboardist Rebecca Liston bringing a 1:56 clip of retro-riffing & girl_grouping RetroPop.

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[thoughtswordsaction]

OMNI Share New Single & Video "Plastic Pyramid"; "Souvenir" LP Out February 16th Via Sub Pop

Photo by Zach Pyles On February 16th, 2024, Atlanta trio Omni will release Souvenir, their fourth album and second for Sub Pop, available worldwide on CD/LP/DSP.  Souvenir finds guitarist Frankie Broyles, singer/bassist Philip Frobos, and drummer Chris Yonker converting their creative fuel into sharp, driving songs that land immediately, sporting chopping riffs, staccato beats, and wiry…

[twinkandwink]

Omni - Rough Trade, Bristol 26th November 2019

[albumcoversuperimpositions]

Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma (2010)

Frankie Broyles - Slow Return (2017)

[koreanqueer]

bradford cox interview for NME, june 2013

[aaronisbrown]

I’ll never tell you what it was I’ll never tell you why I’m Calling again Falling again

[antivibemusicblog]

We’ve been keeping tabs on Frankie Broyles’ moves since he joined Deerhunter (circa their garage sleaze album Monomania) when the Athens GA division of Anti Vibe informed us of his previous outfit Balkans, which he fronted with a Walkmen-like vocal delivery coupled with pretty much near-perfect balance of catchy indie pop music and sweet guitar riffs. 

Since moving on from Deerhunter, he’s been active on his solo EP (definitely worth checking out) and drumming for Deerhunter guitarist Lockett Pundt’s Lotus Plaza but he seems most focussed on playing both insanely complicated guitars and drumming for Omni with former Carnivores singer/bassist, Philip Frobos.

New album ‘Multi-Task’ is a marked step-up from their debut Deluxe where Omni sit in a curious place between Canada’s Women and the more post-punk offerings from early noughties British indie rock (The Futureheads were being Frobos’ first gig). 

Elsewhere on Multi-Task there’s a few definite Balkans-like guitar riffs as Broyles seems to be on a mission to infect the album with smart guitar patterns and runs as Broyles infects Multi Task with earworms that would put most guitarists to shame.

[dustedmagazine]

Omni — Networker (Sub Pop)

Photo by Emily Frobos

“Skeleton Key,” an early single from Omni’s third full-length album, opens in cascades and cartwheels of florid guitar, an unexpectedly fluid interval in the band’s taut, post-punk discipline. This little flourish of warm, exuberance gets yanked in pretty quickly, hedged all around by a terse 4/4 guitar vamp, yet even there, amidst the Gang of Four staccato austerity, sudden flares of sustained notes erupt every couple of measures. It’s like someone’s knocking on a door insistently, repeatedly, without much hope of a reply, when all in an instant, it swings open. Networker, the band’s first album on Sub Pop, speaks with a good deal of mid-fi clarity, separating out the bash and twitch of Omni’s earlier work into line-drawn exactitude. But it also draws out the pretty stabs of melody in this band’s tense, aggressive assault, letting bits of New Wave-y romanticism shine out through the wrung out guardedness of 21st century ironic cool.

The band, as always, centers around Philip Frobos, who plays bass and sings, and Frankie Broyles who does everything else (guitar/drums/keyboards). For Networker, they also worked with Nathaniel Higgins. That set up has some interesting repercussions. In a couple of instances, for example, during “Sincerely, Yours,” Frobos carries the tune, first with the bass, then with his voice, and indeed, throughout, you can hear the bass moving nimbly and melodically in and out of machete slashes of guitar. There’s a bounce to it, a playful quality, that contrasts in an interesting way with the stock-still-as-Andy-Gill dispassionate-ness of the guitar strumming.  

Omni’s lyrics are sharp and post-modern, sketching line-drawn scenarios of disconnected modern life. This is a wiry, stylized anxiety that rhymes and scans and sticks the end of phrases. “Blunt Force,” hazards a repeated rhyme that is opaque and intriguing and intricately fitted to the song’s rhythms: “Sell me/blunt force/a method that still works/to stay/on course/keep it in house/and then outsource.” Later, in “Genuine Person,” Frobos chants, “I’m an im…pos…tor,” against a tip-toeing staccato of guitar and drums, his voice drained of emotion as a siren-y guitar riff nearly drowns him out. Yet even here, the music has an intriguing mix of prickle and glide. The song is anxious and wound tight, yet it gets some relief in more fluid, sustained bits of guitar play. “Courtesy Call,” too, allows a spiked, clipped verse to implode into lusher, less geometric shapes at the break. The bass is again nimble and melodic, fitting into the spaces left by guitar; drums tick on unconcerned, rock hard, dry, the width of a pencil line.

It’s all rather good in a discombobulating way, where the monotonic tension of, say, the Pop Group, meets lavish, emotion-harboring flourishes reminiscent of Orange Juice and even, in a couple of places, the Joe Jackson Band. You can’t get too comfortable even being uncomfortable, because Omni likes to mix it up, the jitter and the sway.

[screamingforyears]

IN_A_MINUTE: // AN INDIE EXPRESS…

“RIGHT BEHIND YOU” is the latest single from @jmascis’ forthcoming solo LP titled ‘What Do We Do Now’ (2/2 @subpop) & it finds iconic six-string slanger mellowing out across a 4:20 clip of laid back, patio vibing & sweetly strummed AltRock.

@maxbandnyc are here w/ “NOTHING’S CHANGED,” the lead single from their debut LP titled ‘Maxband On Ice’ (4/5 @holm.front) & it finds the New York-based quartet of Max Savage, Patrick J Smith, Eric Read & Tim Nelson bringing a crisp 4:41 clip of pitter-patting, six-string driven & quietly/loud IndieRock.

“PLASTIC PYRAMID” is the second single from @omnideluxe’s forthcoming LP titled ‘Souvenir’ (2/16 @subpop) & it finds the ATL-based trio of guitarist Frankie Broyles, singer/bassist Philip Frobos & drummer Chris Yonker linking up w/ Izzy Glaudini of Automatic to bring 3 ½ mins of angularly flexed & robotically hip PostPunk.

@rideox4official are back w/ “PEACE SIGN,” the lead single/track from their forthcoming LP titled ‘Interplay’ (3/29 @pias Wichita) & it finds the veteran Oxford-based quartet of vocalists/guitarists Andy Bell/Mark Gardener, drummer Laurence “Loz” Colbert & bassist Steve Queralt sounding as refreshingly relevant as ever across 4:40 clip of drivingly gazed AltRock.

[half-a-tiger]

OMNI - “Sincerely Yours”, from their @subpop debut ‘Networker’, to be released November 1st, 2019.

Director: Frankie Broyles