Frightened Rabbit
The Midnight Organ Fight
When Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchinson wails, “Give me soft, soft static with a human voice underneath,” on “Old, Old Fashioned” from the band’s sophomore album, The Midnight Organ Fight, he is suggesting that a broken radio might repair the distance between himself and his girlfriend. “Turn off the TV,” he sings, “It’s killing us/We never speak.” It’s easy to picture Hutchinson imagining his own music as that obscured voice. Frightened Rabbit plays the kind of classic, emotive rock and roll that thrives on romantic turmoil. It could be self imposed—one minute he “needs human heat,” the next he reminds himself, “It takes more than fucking someone you don’t know to keep yourself warm." Hutchinson likely makes the music he feels a desperate, fractured heart wants to hear—but he’d likely never want to hear it full blast. It’s easy to imagine him sitting next to that broken radio, straining to listen to his own music under soft, soft static—waiting for an answer.
If Frightened Rabbit’s music were any less good—even a shade less—it would be horrible, or derivative at the very least. Sonically, they resemble several current bands—they have the same Scottish brogue and storytelling style as The Twilight Sad; similar melodies to The Swell Season, as well as their emotional sweep; and the arena bombast of U2. Hutchinson rarely veers from run-of-the-mill sad-sack sentiment—he needs women desperately, but is afraid of hurting them, but always ends up hurting them. This is the dude we all know—so wrapped up in himself it’s impossible to imagine him ever getting his shit together. But Hutchinson and Frightened Rabbit overcome their self-laceration and the anxiety of influence in the best possible way: Through sheer, brilliant song-writing. Album opener “The Modern Leper” tells a story of a girl repeatedly returning to a relationship in which the guy treats her badly, and knows it. That well-trod ground becomes fresh in Hutchinson’s hands. First of all, the song gets told from the man’s point of view. As it happens frequently with Frightened Rabbit, Hutchinson’s lyrics are just unnerving enough to make it questionable how he expects you to feel—interestingly enough, most of Frightened Rabbit’s songs have a sort of musical uplift. Hutchinson’s provocative lyrics (elsewhere, he sings “Jesus is just a spongeboy’s name”) struggle with and offset the sort of emotionally manipulative music U2 perfected on All That You Can’t Leave Behind, grounding it in humanity. Secondly, “The Modern Leper” is a parable in which the protagonist literally cuts off his own foot, rendering himself unable to stand up. Finally, Hutchinson zeros in on the back-and-forth tug of pained romance so acutely it transcends cliché—“You must be a masochist to love a modern leper on his last leg/Well I am ill/But I’m not dead/And I don’t know which of those I’d prefer.”
-Martin Brown, 2008
It might just be the Scottish accent, but on first listen this sounds a lot like "100 Broken Windows"-era Idlewild with the REM gone. Hutchinsons is a better lyricist, though.
Posted by: Sean Witzke | 2008.12.13 at 10:19
My favorite thing about this album is it sounds like the guys were shooting to make arena rock, but they couldn't help including lyrics about "fucking someone you don't know." I'd bet their producer was standing there with a sick look on his face saying "can't we...seriously, just tone it down a little?"
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2008.12.13 at 13:52
Sean, I've had that exact same thought actually. What strikes me is how much Frightened Rabbit sound like a lot of other bands--they're just such good fucking songwriters that they manage to overcome it.
Posted by: Marty | 2008.12.13 at 20:32
it's "Spanish," not "sponge." As in Jesús. Not Hutchinson's proudest moment, there.
Posted by: Leigh Walton | 2009.03.07 at 19:10