Frightened Rabbit - TheMidnight Organ

Mon 30th Jun, 2008 in Music Reviews

Although only released a scant six months after the band’s debut Sing the Grey, a fair few things have happened to Frightened Rabbit and their main songwriter Scott Hutchison in that half year. The band added a second guitarist while Hutchison endured the ending of a long-term relationship, which proved much of the fuel for the songwriting fire for the album.

The result is a particularly revealing insight into the still raw feeling and emotions opened up by the break up, and caused by relationships in general. There’s the self-loathing hopelessness covered by opener The Modern Leper before the last gasp desperate attempt to salvage something from the relationship wreckage and the eventual dawning of the fact that it’s over on I Feel Better .

The songs then traverse through the wreckage to deal with the fragile and fraught return to the sex and sadness extremes of single life – “It takes more than fucking someone you don’t know to keep yourself warm” – and the painful process of moving on. Although this isn’t just an album for wallowing in by the broken-hearted brigade; it’s also a rollickingly enjoyable piece of work. Having put in the hard yards on the live front their sound lands on tape rather fully formed and large sounding. The music has that live gig punch to it, with big sounds coming at you all at once. You almost have to stop and check yourself from clapping or busting out a “whooo!” after the searing guitar solos and cracking drums of “shagging song” Fresh Blood.

To us outside observers, Scotland for so long seemed to hang its musical hat on the twee-er pop side of things, tracing back from Orange Juice to, more recently, the irrepressible Belle and Sebastian. The musical muscle of Mogwai helped show that Scotland had a serious side too and Frightened Rabbit follow the road recently taken by The Twilight Sad that shows bleak and brooding is done brilliantly in brogue.

A broken heart has been the inspiration for songs since right back from the early days of Breakin Up is Hard to Do. The depth of pain and hurt is strikingly and honestly captured on The Midnight Organ, yet the catharsis is also completed and coated in some wonderfully attuned musicianship and melodies and some biting lyrics: “Jesus is just a Spanish boy’s name.” While one would never wish such heartbreak on anyone, if the resulting sounds are as good as this, I hope Mr Hutchison can find a future ex-girlfriend by the time they record their next album.

So if you find yourself suddenly single and anyone tries to comfort you with the tired old line, “Remember there’s plenty more fish in the sea”, just respond with, “Don’t worry, there’s plenty more Frightened Rabbit in the stereo.”