Sobering up A-Frame ditches the bar stool in favor of some kind bud for Life with a Hangover BY SAM PFEIFLE
	Life with a Hangover Released at SPACE, in Portland | Saturday, Aug 20 | with Moshe + the Beat Mechanic + Brzowski & Agent 8 + Kut Kaper | 207.828.5600

The third full-length release from A-Frame and Mike Clouds is and isn’t just what it sounds like. Sure, Life with a Hangover deals in some more serious themes than its predecessor, Life on a Bar Stool (released just six months ago), and evidences some of the inward-looking self inspection that often comes with a strong headache and an unruly gut, but if you’re expecting a groggy and sluggish piece of hip hop, you don’t know Frame. If anything, this disc is more manic, more frenzied, more jam-packed with whatever toxin A-Frame’s so adept at delivering straight to your nervous system.

To tell the truth, a casual fan dropping in at a random point on this disc might not even be able to tell it’s new product. The sound is so dense, the lyrics whirring by like road signs with type not quite big enough, that tracks only distinguish themselves on multiple listens. But, in the end, it’s like criticizing Sufjan Stevens for creating similar orchestral backdrops for songs on his albums about Michigan and Illinois — the songs may sound alike, but the material they cover is miles apart (but they, you know, border each other; maybe the simile doesn’t quite work here, but it’s not my fault the states are right next to each other).

Like trying to escape a packed building filling with smoke, A-Frame’s lyrics force their way off his record with a panic and a rush. So, while they’re alternately amusing, depressing, thoughtful, and pyrotechnic, you have to spend some time with them before you’ll be able to figure that out for yourself.

On first listen, you may even find yourself focusing on the playful vignettes and get the idea there’s nothing but silliness here. The album opens with Frame waking from a bender, groggily talking to himself and searching for a bag of weed. But then, with track two, comes a dark and frenetic (scared almost) rap about the same experience. It’s an interesting juxtaposition between reality and the persona Frame creates for himself. In real life, he can barely find the green bud for the film that covers his eyes. In the fantasy world he creates for himself through hip hop, he wakes up with the energy of a penned-up pitbull.

But just when A-Frame gets rolling, in comes his DJ, Mike Clouds, with a nasty crabbed sample that sounds like someone puking (I’m sort of hoping, here, that they didn’t actually mic someone puking and then use it as a sample — maybe it’s culled from a movie or something) to bring him back down to Earth. And Frame is philosophical with his bravado in the chorus: "Life with a hangover, I got a chipped shoulder/ Wonder if the wisdom comes as I get older."

An image of A-Frame and Mike Clouds as an old-timey comedy team is hard to dismiss. Like Laurel and Hardy or Abbot and Costello, Clouds and Frame nestle comfortably into their roles as straight man and clown/cut-up, the former uniformly sanguine and placid, the latter spastic and self-deprecatingly acidic. Clouds’s beats and production always seem to provide a rock-solid podium and microphone for Frame’s cacophonous rants, with half the humor coming from listening to this kid work himself into such a frenzy over such a placid calm.

They mimic another comedic team, too, Cheech and Chong, on the "High Times Interlude," where a stoned-out Clouds plays Chong, answering a knock on the door:

"Who is it?"

"It’s me, Frame. Open the fucking door, dude, I got the shit," unsubtly whispers A-Frame.

"Frame? Nah, dude, Frame’s not here, dude. Come back later, dude."

Knock, knock, knock.

"Who is it?"

"It’s me, Frame. Open the fucking door, dude. I got the shit, man. The cops gonna be coming up here."

"Cops, dude? Nah, I don’t like the cops, dude. No one’s here."

So it goes. Then we’re treated to Frame’s ode to marijuana growing, "Smoke Screen" — "chronic, hydroponic, gotta love the green bud."

But don’t succumb to the temptation to write this off as Method Man/Redman fun and games. There’s real grit here. The aggressive A-Frame we all know and love won’t be intimidated by his sobering, that’s for sure. He calls out other rappers like the best of them — "You’re scared to rap, cowboy up and take it bareback/ This kid’s career’s dead like Yassir Arafat" — and still busts out laugh-out-louds in just about every song: "So what’s for dinner?/ You wonder why I’m thinner/ I thought we were getting ripped/ Then you showed up with a pinner."

Don’t get the drug reference? This album may not be for you. But who among you can’t appreciate a great rip or two on boy-prez Bush II? On "Ode to George" you’ll get plenty for your music dollar: "The worst terrorist is our own president." There’s plenty of social consciousness elsewhere on the album, too. "State of the Union" features Clouds crafting a chorus from a cribbed Bush I speech and the inspired rhyme, "The Taliban? They need to be on Ativan" (it’s an anti-depressant, often used to combat alcoholism — but you knew that).

Or from "Balance Beem": "I watch a country/ And I see it’s pretty ugly/ My sister’s panic attacks so bad they make me jumpy . . . I walk along the road of life and see that we’re imbalanced/ Riches get the upperhand and poor they get the challenge." Who’s at fault? "Blame it on Republicans."

That’s easy to do, but no one is let completely off the hook here. The sobering for Frame includes plenty of self-inspection. He discusses his own addictions, and one of the most powerful songs here is an ode to a friend who died in jail, a heroin addict for whom "It got so sick he sucked dick to get his pills up in Windham."

How do you parse the dope-loving punchliner from the pulpit-preaching politico? You can’t. With A-Frame, what you hear is what you get. Just make sure you give it a listen.

Sam Pfeifle can be reached at sam@phx.com