Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight (Album)
Frightened Rabbit is a band that lives up to its name. Wide-eyed, unpredictable and seemingly running every direction at once, the Scottish four-piece produce raw yet sprawling pop songs that probe the depths of our natures. New album The Midnight Organ Fight picks up where last year’s Sings The Greys left off, building on their existing sound to produce an album that is bigger and braver than you may at first have expected.
Frightened Rabbit was born in 2003 in Glasgow, a solo act of vocalist/guitarist Scott Hutchison. It took five years for the band to reach its current lineup. Scott’s brother Grant moved to Glasgow and began contributing drums and vocals to Scott’s existing recordings and performing live. 2006 brought the arrival of Billy Kennedy (guitar/ keys) and, earlier this year, keyboardist Andy Monaghan joined the fray. A willingness to experiment with layers of instrumentation, combined with the production style of Peter Katis (responsible for producing albums by Interpol and The National), contributes to the often surprising bigness of the album. This little Rabbit certainly makes a whole lot of noise.
Indeed, The National is perhaps the most immediate point of comparison when discussing Frightened Rabbit. The Brooklyn miserablists certainly explore a lot of similar themes and, like their Glaswegian counterparts, have the seemingly innate knack of making a sad song almost unbearably gorgeous.
The album is strong and there are several songs worthy of mention. An excellent place to start is Good Arms vs Bad Arms, a track that has garnered the band a great many supporters since being featured on Grey’s Anatomy. Though it offers more to the musical palate than other Grey’s favourites Snow Patrol and The Fray, it is nonetheless a clean, simply structured song with great hooks, cooee harmonies, slide guitar sweeps and Hutchison’s beautiful expressive vocals.
It is always wonderful to hear a vocalist’s native accent shining through. While Hutchison, to some extent, adopts the typical American vocal approach, his thick Scottish drawl is impossible to disguise completely. And though his accent is not as pronounced as that of snarly countryman Aidan Moffat (of Arab Strap), it is nonetheless the source of much of the band’s character.
The Modern Leper establishes Frightened Rabbit as a band which, if times were right, could fill stadiums. It is perhaps the strongest example of the band’s anthemic qualities, particularly those of Grant Hutchison whose drumming takes this song above and beyond the usual indie fare.
The Midnight Organ Fight is a strong, well-constructed and charismatic album by a band poised at the edge of the mainstream. A bit of strategic placement and strong publicity could propel Frightened Rabbit toward the kind of success enjoyed by bands like The Shins. In fact, if The O.C. was still running, you could be almost guaranteed that these guys would make an appearance at some point. In any case, this is an engrossing and unexpectedly moving album by a band whose career from this point – much like its name – could run any which way.
