Once again the band traversed on without the support of a label and maintained a rigorous schedule of touring Ireland, Europe and select dates in the US. Like their previous record, much of the touring was done independent of the label's help and was financed by the band's hometown gigs and other work efforts. This spirit shown through, perhaps most evidently, with the band's next record Dance The Devil. With Dance The Devil the band approached the studio with a looser outlook musically, but with no less an incendiary collective of songs. Dance The Devil was at once emotionally direct and sonically skewed, and it managed to harness the acclaimed kinetic energy of their live shows. Well received throughout Europe, it unfortunately met the same fate as Fitzcarraldo in the states andwent unnoticed. Again, the band parted company with their record label, and decided to go at it on their own.
The initial sessions of For The Birds began in Ireland in a country house in Kerry around the Spring of 2000. "It was the first record that we sat down and really talked about," frontman Glen Hansard explains. "We decided to go make it in two weeks in a house, lash out all these songs that didn't get recorded on our last record." For those two weeks in Kerry the band enlisted the production skills of old friend and ex-dEUS man Craig Ward. Glen continues, "It was also the first album we recorded while writing, because we were tired of songs being played and played live, and by the time we got to record them, they were dead. It was basically just an honest recording of where we were right then, not tailor-made for anybody but ourselves." Craig helped get the band started on a journey, which would see The Frames produce their finest work yet.
In fall of 2000, the band traveled to Chicago to finally work with recording engineer Steve Albini (Pixies, Nirvana, Bush) and the two camps instantly hit it off. "The guy's the only real socialist I've ever met in music," Glen enthuses. "Steve's a complete engineer; he doesn't produce. The idea of a producer is to make something easier to listen to, and Steve is opposite, he's like, 'Fuck the timing or tuning, it's great.' He's very honest, and he's a hardcore man, the only person I've come across in music ever who's been straight with us and not pulled any punches. He's a thinker, and if he wasn't a recording engineer he'd have to be a writer or some kind of philosopher, because he's just constantly talking about the idea of art.
