The Fray

How to Save a Life strongly suggests that the Fray draw much of their inspiration from the maudlin passages of suburban high school life, dripping as it does with adolescent lust, loss and confusion. All they need to do now is subtly introduce an edge of danger and hurt to their sound, and anything could happen.

The debut from this Denver quartet blends piano-based Brit-pop swooning and scruffy
alt-rock melancholia, as if that Keane guy were backed by the Counting Crows. Achy
ballads such as "Fall Away" are too long on airbrushed prettiness, but between the band's
sculpted guitars and meatier cuts such as the lead single, "Over My Head (Cable Car)," How
to Save a Life offers more elegantly wasted twentysomething angst than the aver... More >