Trying to top an album as astounding as “The Midnight Organ Fight” (TMOF) is a tall order for any band, let alone the band who crafted it out of a broken heart and loneliness.  Some things have changed for Frightened Rabbit since TMOF, and some things have not.  Some that have include a new optimism and renewed hope in life and love. Some that haven’t include their unique storytelling and ability to create beautifully touching and catchy music.

If you’re a die-hard Debbie Downer and couldn’t imagine a Frightened Rabbit without some kind of melancholic despair, don’t fret, there’s still a smidgen of it on “The Winter Of Mixed Drinks”, in fact many of the songs talk about graves, drowning, stripping flesh and being alone. Since TMOF singer and songwriter Scott Hutchison hasn’t had a breakup, which played such an integral part in TMOF, but he has said (according to an interview with ThePopCop) that it’s about an escape and a slight breakdown. Album opener “Things” is a stark look at the materialistic nature of life in the western world as we insist on collecting and consuming things that matter not when compared to friends and family.  The start of the song has the same note as the start of “Waterfall” by The Stone Roses, and incidentally lasts for the same amount of time (5 seconds), closely followed by grungy guitar and Scott’s quivering voice proclaiming “And the dust it settles on these things/Displays my age again/Like a new skin made from old skin and barely been lived in/I didn’t need these things, I didn’t them/Pointless artifacts from a mediocre past/So I shed my clothes/Shed my flesh down to the bone and burn the rest”.  It’s a terrific start to the album and as it ebbs out and into “Swim Until You Can’t See Land” it’s a perfect transition from one song about ridding yourself of all of your possessions and starting afresh, to the next song about swimming as far as you can until everything you know fades into the horizon. It’s actually quite an upbeat-sounding song, with the intro being plucky and sunshine-filled, the bass plodding along behind and Scott’s refrained voice, keeping it’s feet firmly in the sand for some of the pelters that are yet to come.

“The Lonliness” is their most to-the-point song to date, however it’s not as dreary as you might think with a title like that. It’s difficult to make a dreary song and include handclaps, which they’ve done here, and whilst the lyrics are lonely and hopeful at the same time, the song itself is a mammoth.  As it builds from handclaps and a single guitar, Scott’s voice gets louder and an acoustic guitar is thrown into the fray and all of a sudden it stops and leaves way for a single plucked riff, only to have the handclaps pick up and battle cries that sound as if they were sung by 50,000 people in a football stadium back Scott’s lyrics, “Fall down find God just to lose it again/The community together we were hammering it/Fell down found love I can lose it again/Now a communal heart beats miles from here”.  As epics go, “The Lonliness” may just be Frightened Rabbit’s “Iliad”.  ”The Winter Of Mixed Drinks” was written by Scott in Crail, Fife, on the coast of The North Sea about an hour and a half north of Edinburgh, and the sea takes a starring role throughout the album, possibly most evident on “The Wrestle”.  It begins with haunting, almost sonar-like tones that continue throughout the song, reverberating handclaps interrupt the vocals and at the halfway point the drums make an appearance to drive home the lyrics “My enemies please stay close to me/No breath left, cold breath thief”.

“Skip The Youth” is one of their longest songs yet, clocking in at 6:18, the first 1:45 of that involves distorted guitars and feedback, dense drums and a looping keyboard.  When it stops it makes way for a single piano note as Scott sings “And I’ve been digging that hole tonight/On my knees beneath the moon/All I need is a place to lie/Guess a grave will have to do”, it’s a song about how tiresome and exhausting youth can be, in turn making you feel old. “Nothing Like You”, the album’s almost mid-way point, is a snappy jumper, the opening of which is reminiscent of the jangly guitar that Jimi Hendrix used on “Crosstown Traffic”, subsiding for the solid guitar that Frightened Rabbit used on “Nothing Like You’. The chorus is contagious even if the lyrics may be a little on the clichéd side “She was not the cure for cancer/And all my questions still asked for answers” and chances are you’ll be humming it for days, I know I was.  The album does have a throw-away song in the same vein as their short instrumentals from both of their previous albums.  ”Man/Bag Of Sand” is a slower, more distant and less involved version of “Swim Until You Can’t See Land”, with audio clips presumably from movies and old carnival-like music.  ”Foot Shooter” is a mournfully beautiful, piano-led song with Jesus & Mary Chain drums as Scott trembles whilst singing “And as the voice up comes and my mouth goes numb/I limp out to the sound of the breaking of broken toes/A vandal spoke/And in the stark and the sobering dry sunlight/I will blink my eyes and hope the blink in me erased/All the shit that I said, then”.

The hope that’s on “The Winter Of Mixed Drinks” rears it’s weighty head on “Not Miserable”, as Scott comes to terms with realising that what he lost “in the flood” (probably the failed relationship that populated “The Midnight Organ Fight”) was not that much after all.  The song ebbs and flows from profound to personal in one fell swoop as the guitar wails in the background, almost drowned out by the piano and Scott declaring that he might just be happy again, “And though it’s easier now/I will always remember the night that I almost drowned/All alone in a house/And the love that I lost/With all of the shit that came out in the wash/Just a pocket of fluff/And I’m not put upon/I’m free from disease, no grays, no liver spots/Most of the misery’s gone/Gone, gone to the bone”. On their last two albums you’d be a liar to say that they were either front-loaded or back-loaded, they were just loaded. “The Winter Of Mixed Drinks” is no different and as the album closes it offers up “Living In Colour” and “Yes I Would”.  With “Living In Colour” we’re treated to raucous guitars, militaristic drum beats, fleshy and immovable background yells, xylophones and the strength and speed of “Nothing Like You”, it has “next single” written all over it. “Yes I Would” is a much slower affair and almost touches on the country-esque tones of “Good Arms vs Bad Arms” from their last album, a fitting end to an exquisite album.

“The Winter Of Mixed Drinks” is a complete success and whilst many may say that it’s not as good as “The Midnight Organ Fight”, it’s a different album in many senses so all-round comparisons to it are unfair.  Frightened Rabbit are taking us on a journey through life, love, aging, happiness, and sorrow.  If “Sing The Greys” was about youth and “The Midnight Organ Fight” about love and sorrow, “The Winter Of Mixed Drinks” is about shedding yourself from each of those and moving on, letting things go and finding out what’s important in life, love and sorrow.  The fans who liked Frightened Rabbit because of their doom and gloom will have plenty to be happy for on this album, but they’re probably also secretly hoping that the band continue to have miserable lives that contribute to their music.

Personally I hope they only get happier.  I like the hopeful and smiley-but-tinged-with-doom-and-gloom Frightened Rabbit.  Next up is surely their natural progression into Beach Boys territory making music that makes everyone else happy and smiley.

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9/10

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Worth checking out: Malcolm Midlleton, Mumford & Sons, Foxface

Buy “The Winter of Mixed Drinks”/Download “The Winter of Mixed Drinks”

“Listen Before You Buy” – “The Winter Of Mixed Drinks”