Frightened Rabbit can do no wrong according to Australian fans. Last in the country for the Laneway Festival earlier this year, the Scots wooed crowds with their passionate and intimate performances. Just six months on and the band are set to return to Australia, this time armed with a new album, The Winter of Mixed Drinks.
Not only will the band be stumbling around, and playing, Splendour in the Grass, their popularity here will also see them upgrade to some of the countries finest venues for sideshows. Lead singer, and founding member, Scott Hutchinson who took sometime out the band’s heavy touring schedule to chat with FasterLouder.
NB. Enhance your experience by imagining a thick Scottish accent while reading.
Where are you joining us from Scott?
I’m in Salt Lake City, in Utah. We’re on tour just now, over halfway through a US tour, we’re going to play a show tonight.
Who have you got touring with you at the moment?
We have a band from Chicago called Maps And Atlases, and label mates of ours called Our Brother The Native. It’s quite an eclectic bill, but it’s nice to go and see a show where it’s not just bands that sound like a shit version of another one! So it’s been really nice to watch them play.
Since you were in Australia last, the band has had the release of your third album, The Winter Of Mixed Drinks. Have you had a chance to come down from the high that is releasing an album?
It’s been a strange one. I mean, I was really excited about it coming out, and I guess when you don’t really have time to think about it… almost the day it came out, we went on tour and started playing shows around the release. So it’s been a hive of activity but it’s definitely something that you find yourself, when you’re playing shows on tour and stuff, it’s easy to get detached from the fact that people are evening listening to it. It’s a bit of a detachment from reality. We’ve never really got to have a rest and look back and everything, but it’s still nice to see people getting into the new record.
Of your recent show at the Laneway Festival, our former deputy editor described Frightened Rabbit as ‘a band who seem incapable of a dispassionate performance’. Is passion something that you’re conscious of exuding on stage, or is it something that comes naturally?
Sometimes it comes completely naturally, because you can feed off an audience and stuff, and then sometimes you really have to dig in and find it. But I think it’s the least you can do, really, is at least look like you’re enjoying yourself! Even if it’s pretend, and I’m not saying it’s ever pretend really, but sometimes you have to dig a bit deeper than other nights. I mean, I hate going to see bands who look like they aren’t having fun, because it’s a good job, it’s not working in a bank! So I think a passionate and heartfelt performance is the least that people can expect from a concert.
You’re back again soon for Splendour in the Grass, so that’s your second big Australian festival in one year. Sometimes we wait years to see an overseas band just once. So what was the main motivator behind you guys coming back so soon?
Like the last tour, when something goes quite well, as soon as you leave the country you start becoming more widely known than when you were actually there. So I think it’s important for us to capitalise on what we did down there, and not wait for another year. It’s so easy, especially now, to get lost in the mix of hundreds and thousands of bands that come through and play shows. Because the last tour went so well, we didn’t want to wait too long before we came back; there seems to be a growing enthusiasm for the band down in Australia, and we love to go, so it’s pretty basic really.
Looking back on the Laneway tour and the two shows you did on the side of that, is there anything that you say ‘okay, we want to do something differently this time,’ or ‘maybe we should have done that last time’… what are you going to bring to the table this time round?
Maybe we should bring some sort of band outfit, like spandex…
Spandex is big. Light rigs are pretty big as well or maybe a pyramid …
A pyramid, or Stonehenge models, that would be good. Nah, I don’t know, we’re just going to continue. The funny thing is, the way things work for us, there are still a lot of people getting into the band, we might be adding a few songs that we’ve not been playing from the new record on this tour, that we didn’t play last time, we’ll probably add them onto the set.
Especially for Splendour in the Grass, we just want to make it the best 40 minutes that we possibly can, so we’re going to cram in all the good stuff. And in the sideshows we’ll just try and play as much new stuff as we can, hopefully people have been getting into the album through radio stations like Triple J. We’re not really ones for, like you said, making an effort visually! So it’s going to be just about what we play and how we play it.
Have you had a chance to look at the Splendour line-up, is there anyone on the bill that you’re particularly excited about playing alongside?
I haven’t even looked at it yet, that’s my bad, I’m sorry. I’ve heard it’s a big one, and there’s going to be a bunch of stuff I’m sure that I’d love to see. Is it just one day, or is it two days?
Three days! It’s like a mini-Glastonbury.
Oh wow, there’s got to be some good stuff on.
I’ll give you a few names. We’ve got Pixies, Richard Ashcroft from The Verve, Grizzly Bear, Broken Social Scene, We Are Scientists, Mumford and Sons… loads and loads and loads.
That’s the thing, I was just about to say you can make a plan to go and see a band, and what inevitably happens… you say ‘I’m definitely going to see LCD Soundsystem at this time,’ and your tour manager will come to you and say ‘Scott, you’ve got an interview right now,’ but it’s like ‘I was going to go and see’… so you end up being disappointed. What I’m going to do is I’m going to make myself no plans, I’m going to get drunk and stumble along to something and enjoy myself.
So if anybody sees Scott Hutchinson stumbling around Splendour…
Give me help!
As with Laneway festival, you’re playing a couple of sideshows as we’ve said. This time around, you’re playing at a couple of notably larger venues than you did last time in Sydney and Melbourne. Is moving to a larger venue seen as a bit of an achievement?
Yeah! It is, it’s one of the few benchmarks that you can have, or even actually understanding how many people like what you’re doing. On this tour in the US, I always call it ‘graduating’ to the next venue, and it’s not like I want to keep graduating and graduating until we’re playing stadiums or something, that’s never going to happen.
But I think that as long as you are moving forward, you should be playing to more people, and more people should be getting into your music. So I like it. Plus the sound is always better in big venues as well, so it’s nice from that kind of purely technical perspective – everything sounds as it should. So we’re really excited that we’re finally ‘graduating’ in Australia.
I did read a few reviews of your sideshows last time, a couple of people commented on how intimate it was and that was a really great thing. I guess that one of the bad things about moving to larger venues, often, is that you lose that intimacy. Is there a way that you try and maintain that?
I try to talk with the audience, and involve them in it. I think one of the things that really sets bands apart, and I’m not saying we have it down just yet, is their ability to make a bigger venue seem intimate, you know? Part of what we try and do is just bring everyone in the room together so we’re all working together, I guess, and I think that makes for a better atmosphere. I hate the separation between band and audience, I think it should be… it’s a two-way street, you both have to work at it.
One big happy family!
Exactly! We’re all related.
I just want to touch on your fan base… I was watching a video for Nothing Like You on YouTube, and one of the comments below said ‘Frightened Rabbit are the best band on the planet right now, I seriously believe that’. Another comment said something probably as supportive but a little bit different, it said ‘I want to fuck this song’, sounds like you’ve got some pretty passionate fans!
Oh, wow! They are, they really are. The last record especially worked its way into people’s lives in a pretty big way, you know. People come and talk to me a lot about why they like the album, and what particularly. There always seemed to be an event that happened in their lives where they came to the record just at the right time. I’m not kidding when I say that people have come up to me and told me that the album stopped them from killing themselves and stuff like that. That sort of stuff is wild to hear, and I think it’s important to them. It’s amazing to me, it’s still amazing to me that people have actually taken our music on to that level, but I’m eternally grateful that they have, I can’t explain it really.
Frightened Rabbit sideshows presented by FasterLouder:
Monday 2nd August – The HiFi, Melbourne
Tuesday 3rd August – Factory Theatre, Sydney
to listen to their music now on 