Surf is the second solo album by Scottish

Scottish people

The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...

 singer–songwriter

Singer–songwriter

Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...

 Roddy Frame

Roddy Frame

Roddy Frame is a Scottish singer-songwriter and musician, who was the founder of the 1980s indie band, Aztec Camera, and more recently is a solo performer.-Career:...

, first released in the UK on 5 August 2002 via Redemption Records, and in the US on 8 October 2002 via Cooking Vinyl

Cooking Vinyl

Cooking Vinyl is a UK-based independent record company, founded in 1986. Its original orientation was toward contemporary folk music—notably Billy Bragg, and Michelle Shocked's Texas Campfire Tapes, recorded on a Sony Walkman, one of its first releases...

. Surf is notable in that every song on the album was recorded in Roddy Frame's "own front room".

Critical reception

Surf received mixed to positive reviews upon release. Burhan Wazir, writing for The Observer

The Observer

The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...

, likened the album to Steve Earle

Steve Earle

Stephen Fain "Steve" Earle is an American singer-songwriter known for his rock and Texas Country as well as his political views. He is also a producer, author, a political activist, and an actor, and has written and directed a play....

's Train a Comin'

Train a Comin'

Train a Comin' is an acoustic studio album by Steve Earle. The album, Earle's first in five years, was released in 1995. In addition to Earle, it features Peter Rowan, Norman Blake, Roy Huskey, and Emmylou Harris...

, declaring it "wonderfully understated", and noting a distinct departure from Frame's previous material; "There are few signatures here that have come to mark the work of Roddy Frame, the Pride of East Kilbride, with his previous band Aztec Camera. That said, Surf is one of his best records since 1987's breakthrough, Love. It's a break-up album and the sparse acoustic songs lend Frame a maturity he previously struggled to express." Q

Q (magazine)

Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology...

magazine's Jon Horsley also noted the difference in sound between Surf and "all of Frame's previous work". Singling out "Over You" and "Mixed Up Love" as two of the album's best tracks, he went on to praise Frame's vocals, lyrics, and songwriting ability; "Simplicity is the key, displaying Frame's deft hand with a lyric and mastery of direct songwriting. Best of all is Frame's now beautifully mature voice." Noting the record's "bare-bones" sound, Gary Glauber of PopMatters

PopMatters

PopMatters is an international webzine of cultural criticism that covers many aspects of popular culture. PopMatters publishes reviews, interviews, and detailed essays on most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, comics, sports, theater,...

 thought that the album comprised "a pleasant voice, competent musicianship and most important, strong songs". Drawing comparison with Ron Sexsmith

Ron Sexsmith

Ronald Eldon "Ron" Sexsmith is a Canadian singer-songwriter from St. Catharines, Ontario, currently based in Toronto. He started his own band when he was fourteen years old, and released the first recordings of his own material seven years later, in 1985...

's "best compositions", he surmised that Frame manages to succeed "where lesser talents would fall."

Allmusic's Matt Fink also remarked upon Surf's "undiluted format", highlighting Frame's "clever and consistent" songwriting ability as two of the album's most positive aspects. Yet, despite claiming that Frame's "knack for subtlety and nuance makes for near perfect acoustic balladry", he found fault with both the vocal delivery—which he described as "indistinctive and overwhelmingly mellow"—and the record's "lack of both sonic and conceptual variation". Reviewing the album for The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

, Adam Sweeting also bemoaned the album's lack of diversity in which he felt that "Frame tends to stick to a fairly narrow palette of musical shapes and chord patterns", but also declared there to be "some treats if sampled sparingly", most notably "Over You", "I Can't Start Now" and "Big Ben". The Independent

The Independent

The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...

's Andy Gill highlighted "Frame's slightly sour vocals"—which he described as having "a desolate purity that recalls the draft-dodging Seventies troubadour Jesse Winchester"—but ultimately found Surf to be "too personal to afford much pleasure to the casual listener".

Accolades

Publication	Country	Accolade	Year	Rank
Mojo Mojo (magazine) MOJO is a popular music magazine published initially by Emap, and since January 2008 by Bauer, monthly in the United Kingdom. Following the success of the magazine Q, publishers Emap were looking for a title which would cater for the burgeoning interest in classic rock music...	United Kingdom United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...	Best 40 Albums of the Year	2002	20
The Scotsman The Scotsman The Scotsman is a British newspaper, published in Edinburgh.As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 38,423, down from about 100,000 in the 1980s....	United Kingdom United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...	100 Best Scottish Albums	—	34
Uncut UNCUT (magazine) Uncut magazine, trademarked as UNCUT, is a monthly publication based in London. It is available across the English-speaking world, and focuses on music, but also includes film and books sections...	United Kingdom United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...	Best Albums of the Year	2002	*

* denotes an unranked list.

Album cover

The album cover shows a night-time skyline of London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, in particular the tower of Guy's Hospital

Guy's Hospital

Guy's Hospital is a large NHS hospital in the borough of Southwark in south east London, England. It is administratively a part of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. It is a large teaching hospital and is home to the King's College London School of Medicine...

 and is taken from the tower block Burwash House on Weston Street, London SE1 by Photographer Hannah Grace Deller inspired by the photo Nightview of Berenice Abbott

Berenice Abbott

Berenice Abbott , born Bernice Abbott, was an American photographer best known for her black-and-white photography of New York City architecture and urban design of the 1930s.-Youth:...

 made in 1932 in New York City.

Track listing

All tracks written by Roddy Frame

Roddy Frame

Roddy Frame is a Scottish singer-songwriter and musician, who was the founder of the 1980s indie band, Aztec Camera, and more recently is a solo performer.-Career:...

.

1. "Over You" – 3:04
2. "Surf" – 4:14
3. "Small World" – 3:51
4. "I Can't Start Now" – 3:41
5. "Abloom" – 2:17
6. "Tough" – 2:17
7. "Big Ben" – 3:37
8. "High Class Music" – 3:09
9. "Turning the World Around" – 3:16
10. "Mixed Up Love" – 3:13
11. "For What It Was" – 3:03

Japanese Bonus Tracks

12. "Crossing Newbury Street" – 4:27
13. "Your Smile Stops the Hands of Time" – 2:32

Personnel

• Roddy Frame
  Roddy Frame
  Roddy Frame is a Scottish singer-songwriter and musician, who was the founder of the 1980s indie band, Aztec Camera, and more recently is a solo performer.-Career:...
  
   – acoustic guitar
  Acoustic guitar
  An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...
  
  , vocals
  Singing
  Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
  
  

Technical personnel

• Hannah Grace Deller – recording
  Sound recording and reproduction
  Sound recording and reproduction is an electrical or mechanical inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording...
  
  , photography
  Photography
  Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
  
  
• Jeremy Stacey – mixing
  Audio mixing (recorded music)
  In audio recording, audio mixing is the process by which multiple recorded sounds are combined into one or more channels, most commonly two-channel stereo. In the process, the source signals' level, frequency content, dynamics, and panoramic position are manipulated and effects such as reverb may...
  
  
• Chris Blair – mastering
  Audio mastering
  Mastering, a form of audio post-production, is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a data storage device ; the source from which all copies will be produced...
  
  
• Greg Jakobek – design

Chart performance

Surf spent a total of two weeks in the UK Albums Chart

UK Albums Chart

The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...

, peaking at number 91 on 17 August 2002.

Chart (2002)	Peak position
UK Albums Chart	91