Frank Turner

When the punk settles down

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About

Frank Turner has already had several lives. Who would have thought that this banker's son, grandson of Sir, born in Barhein and living next to Prince William at the prestigious Eton College, would end up on the road to play a folk tinged with nostalgia? No one would have put a piece on this trajectory and yet it was music that young Frank clung to.

With a rebellious soul, rage in his stomach and hair in the wind, he started his career with Million Dead, a post-hardcore band with explosive sounds. Screaming vocals against a background of saturated guitars, they enjoyed a small notoriety before exploding in flight, each chord having become a source of conflict. This is the moment Frank Turner chose to unplug the electricity. All he had left were his six strings and the will to soften his music.

No return to his roots for him, he almost discovered folk music at the same time as he wrote it. Tinged with rock and punk, his albums with their melancholic accents are proof that the style is reinventing itself, far from the image of American singers wearing leather boots and jackets. But what Turner does not give up, faithful to his values and the rage of his beginnings, is his strength of protest, his willingness to be a witness to a changing era. Between sensitive folk and devastating rock, he evokes the artist's loneliness, the impoverishment of England, homesickness and the need to escape.

Always on the edge, his songs instantly make you want to follow him on the road he loves like an old friend you can't get rid of. With more than 2,000 concerts, he himself admits: "there is an unresolved conflict between my homesickness and my thirst for travel [...] I am very happy when I get home, and a week later I want to get back on the road". What is certain is that we will be hearing for a long time to come his claims and his refrains that some people tattoo in their skin.

Highlights

2006

Frank Turner takes his guitar and leaves !

After five years with the band Million Dead, the band splits up with a bang and Frank Turner leaves alone, guitar slung over his shoulder. He was already playing folk music as a side project and decided to go full time. The following year, in 2007, he released his first album, Sleep is for the Week, which was very well received by the critics who didn't necessarily expect him in this genre.

2011

At the top of folklore, the Olympic Games

The artist has made a series of albums and concerts to bring his folk music to the four corners of the world. In 2011, he will release the very good England Keep my Bones, an album which "sees him reach the top of his art" according to the Inrocks and which will rank 12th in Great Britain when it is released. The following year, the artist is consecrated. He performed at the opening pre-ceremony of the London Olympics.

2017

On the roads of Sierra Leone

The artist is on the road to Africa, but this time it is not for a series of concerts. With a keen awareness of the world around him, he sets off with the Joe Strummer Foundation to raise funds to open a music studio in Freetown and encourage young people to turn to this art in a country where 50,000 of them live on the streets. He also recorded some tracks there.

2019

An album without men

Two years later, we find this militant commitment in the form of a concept album, No Man's Land. It tells the story of the famous women in history in song, with each title attached to a podcast. For the first one, it welcomes Emily Barker to evoke the career of Sister Rosetta Tharpe who strongly influenced rock music.

Testimonials

The fans speak
The inside view
Seen in the press

Frank Turner invites us on a musical stroll through the English countryside, where the fog of folk meets the intrepid wind of punk. It makes you want to follow him against all odds, to finally settle down beside him and hear him play at the counter of an old pub. In short, it was a great concert !

Justine, after a concert in Paris

Frank Turner switched from electric to acoustic and it was probably the best decision of his life. He takes us on a stroll through his folk universe where we also find the punk and rock influences that rocked his youth. His albums are nuggets that are still too confidential and his concerts, although too rare on our side of the Channel, deliver a dose of energy and commitment that is addictive !

Of these tattooed neo-songwriters, the Englishman Frank Turner is undoubtedly the most exciting, as in the space of two albums following the demise of Million Dead he has given birth to some of the most authentic and intoxicating melodies there is. [...] A career, above all, where posing and jack-in-the-box are not allowed to stay and which can be summed up in the feverish refrain of the Photosynthesis manifesto: "I refuse to sit down. I refuse to shut up. But most of all, I refuse to grow up."

The Inrocks