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Isaac Slade had to laugh. Here he was, finishing up a piano part for the last song to be recorded for the Fray’s debut album, How to Save a Life. And co- producer Aaron Johnson is asking him how the second record is coming?
“I laughed at him. He wasn’t laughing,” Slade says. “I said, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding, right?’ He said, ‘No, you’ve got to start writing for it.’”
Slade and his cohorts – guitarist and vocalist Joe King, drummer Ben Wysocki and guitarist Dave Welsh – got the hint.
“One of the first songs came six months after that,” Slade says. “So it’s been on our mind for a long time.”

And what a time it’s been for the Fray: The Denver-based group played to sold-out crowds around the world in support of 2005’s How to Save a Life (Epic/Sony), which went on to sell more than 3 million copies in the U.S. Melodically charged hits “Cable Car (Over My Head)” and the title track worked their way onto the radio and into the hearts of fans – not to mention onto the soundtrack of TV phenom “Grey’s Anatomy.” Throw in a trio of Grammy nominations, and you’ve got the kind of out-of-the-gate explosion that any young artist would envy.

It’s also the kind of success that can play some mind games, and all four musicians acknowledge experiencing moments of the unhealthy headiness of celebrity.

“It’s a battle to go through any kind of fame or success – it’s not good for a person,” King says. “But we have people around us who really ground us. Most of them, at some point or another in the last couple of years, would say, ‘Dude, you’re nothing special.’”

“We’ve tried really hard to get back to who we are and what we do,” Wysocki says. “And that’s pretty much friends making music.”

With perspective regained, the friends didn’t take themselves too seriously – but took their art very seriously – when beginning work in earnest on the new record in the summer of 2007.

“A lot of people know us for two songs, and those are both extremes – way up and way down,” says Slade, the Fray’s lead singer and piano player. He and King are the group’s primary songwriters, and count those two hits among their compositions.

“This album has a lot more depth. To write those songs in the first place, we had to have a soberness or gravity to what we were writing,” Slade says. “We wanted to make the songs count. I’m happy with this record because the songs feel like they count. They really connect to us.”

Like the Fray’s organic beginning in 2002, when onetime high school friends Slade and King bumped into each other at a guitar shop, the new album’s “You Found Me” begins quietly. Slade is at his piano, contemplating a soul lost and found. And like the band’s rise in recent years, the song evolves from something intimate into something huge, a haunting guitar-and-drum opus, with Slade’s anguished singing making for an unshakeable experience. And that’s just one track.
On “Absolute,” Slade pushes his voice into new territory, exploring the upper register of his range. The pretty “Never Say Never” boasts a chugging momentum that suggests it’ll have a welcome home on the stage, where the group honed its chops over the past three years. The Fray even brought untested songs to the hometown stage early in 2008 at Denver’s Bluebird Theater, taking note of audience reaction before returning to studio work.

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