I finally got my hands on a copy of “Sing The Greys” by Frightened Rabbit. The thing about this copy is that it’s one of the original 1,000 limited pressings of their debut album, and it’s still sealed!

The front cover is exactly the same as the re-issue from 2007, but the back has the tracklisting (only 10 songs as opposed to the 12 on the re-issue) as well as their (then) website and the website of their own record label that they released it on, “Hits The Fan Records”.  That site doesn’t work anymore but their MySpace page is still up.

So now I just need to decide if I should to open it or not…

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”

As the Frightened Rabbit extravaganza week continues I posted a review of The Midnight Organ Fight yesterday, Frightened Rabbit’s second and absolutely stunning album.  Today I’m sharing videos and songs from some of the songs on that album.

The first single from TMOF was “Head Rolls Off”, one of the many standout tracks on the album.  The video features the band (then still a three piece) playing in a classroom as the kids come in and starting dancing around to the music, it’s a great sight.  But before that check out the version they recorded for Daytrotter.

Download audio file (02-Head-Rolls-Off.mp3)

Their second single from TMOF was “Fast Blood”.  I don’t think they’ll be playing many venues as small as the one below any more:

Their last single from TMOF was “I Feel Better” and as previously explained is the sequel to “Snake” from “Sing The Greys”:

Below are a few tracks from their second Daytrotter session at the tail-end of 2009:

“Good Arms vs Bad Arm”s:

Download audio file (03-Good-Arms-Vs.-Bad-Arms.mp3)

“The Twist”

Download audio file (01-The-Twist.mp3)

“My Backwards Walk”

Download audio file (02-My-Backwards-Walk.mp3)

“Poke”

Download audio file (03-Poke.mp3)

Yesterday I posted a review of Frightened Rabbit’s debut album “Sing The Greys” with a stream for you to listen to it for free. Today I’m going to show some videos of songs from “Sing The Greys”. They only released one single from that album, a double A-side of “Be Less Rude” and “The Greys”. It was released on November 5th 2007 to coincide with the re-recorded/remastered version of “Sing The Greys”, a full year and a half after it was initially released to a limited run of 1,000 copies on their own record label Hit The Fan Records.  I’ve also added some excellent versions of a few songs that they recorded live for Daytrotter back in 2008 and 2009.

They made a video for “The Greys”, directed by Fraser Campbell and released on FatCat Records in September 2007.

Although they never released a video for “Be Less Rude” and have since vowed to never play the song live again, here’s an excellent solo acoustic version of the song by singer Scott Hutchison for Off The Beaten Tracks, taken in May 2009 in Edinburgh.

Below is the Daytrotter version of “Be Less Rude”.

Download audio file (frightened-rabbit-be-less-rude.mp3)

Probably their most charming song to date is “Snake”, the last track on “Sing The Greys”. At an all-request gig (where there’s no setlist and audience members heckle the band until they play the song they want to hear) in New York, Scott explained the inspiration behind the song: “Jokingly holding up blank set-lists, Hutchinson explained that the idea for the all-request show came along because after 10 months of touring, “We just wanted to do something that was going to be enjoyable.” And enjoy it he did, telling stories about the songs between swigs from a bottle of whiskey. “Everyone thinks it’s about my penis, but it’s not,” he remarked after playing “Snake,” which he elaborated is actually about his plans to surprise a woman in New York City by showing up with nothing but the clothes on his back and a draft snake he’d been keeping for her. As it happened, the girl was “less than thrilled,” so he wrote “I Feel Better” as a sequel, reusing the music from the chorus.”

A video for “Snake” was made by Mark Charlton at Bluestar Animation and released in February 2009.

Below is the Daytrotter version of “Go-Go-Girls”.

Download audio file (frightened-rabbit-the-go-go-girls.mp3)

The most epic, anthemic song on “Sing The Greys” is “Square 9″. The below video was taken at their very first show in the U.S. in New York in January 2007, and shows the band as a three piece with Billy sporting a hoodie and Scott sporting beardless cheeks.

Below is the Daytrotter version of “Square 9″.

Download audio file (frightened-rabbit-square-nine.mp3)

Initially released in the summer of 2006 on their own record label (Hit The Fan Records), Sing The Greys was given a limited run of 1,000 copies by Frightened Rabbit.  Those first thousand were enough to put them on the radar of many a journalist, magazine, newspaper, blog, and year-end “best of” lists.

Hailing from Selkirk, Scotland, their sound is bluntly described as Scottish Indie-Folk, comprising of (now) five members playing the standard guitars, drums, and keyboards.  What sets them apart from not only other bands they’re compared to (The Twilight Sad, We Were Promised Jetpacks, even Death Cab For Cutie and Idlewild) but from that basic pigeon-holed label I gave them above (Scottish Indie-Folk), is their passion and honesty, heard in abundance through “Sing The Grey’s”.  Opening song “The Greys” is a splendid rock song in which we’re treated to our first dose of singer Scott Hutchison’s heartfelt and quivering voice as he cries “What’s the blues when you/When you’ve got the greys?/I don’t have much of a story to say/I just sit around at night and avoid the day/If I do anything at all, it would be to get up/And avoid conversation and human contact/You can’t touch the world if you can’t even feel pain/You should come back here”.  On the second track “Music Now” the band are heard yelling “Music Now!” in a chant-like summoning to the Gods, shadowed by a kick-drum shadowing an upbeat acoustic guitar.  Scott sings along in a child-like manner, hitting every word on the same beat as the drum, switching up pace halfway through and then ending on a phone tone (a tone from a phone), before meandering into “The First Incident”, a slow and timely 1:48 instrumental, the first of three on the album.

“He yawns/She yawns as well/She yawns because she’s bored/He yawns because he can’t sleep anymore/They go out, fill their mouths with drink and food so they don’t have to speak/And in between courses they’re gasping for air, so they yawn and look at their feet”.  Scott’s bitingly honest lyrical style is evident on every song on “Sing The Greys”, with “Yawns” taking a bitter look at worn-out relationships, and “Be Less Rude” (a song they now refuse to play live) that involves clattering drums wrestling with a ringing guitar riff as Scott offers some friendly advice about someone perhaps not being such a dick as they might actually get along. After “The Second Incident”, the album’s second instrumental, we get possibly the best song on the album in “Go-Go-Girls”, a resounding jumper with static guitars that jab straight into your skull, words about drinking like it’s the end of the world, the blood of Christ, dancing girls, and street fights, and a drumstick rattle that sounds like the Alien from the Alien movies made a guest appearance on the album (although he’s not credited in the album notes).

“Behave!” is the eighth song on the album, a beautiful acoustic number under-pinned by a deep and intense bass line as Scott honestly imbues his lack of confidence in front of a certain someone.  “Square 9” is the longest track on the album and by far the most epic, the huge sound of rambunctious guitars and Animal from the Muppets on drums building until it breaks with distant cries and as he sings “It’ll be like square one, where we fell in love/Forget about square two, there was no ‘me and you’/Just like square one, where we fell in love, under the tree/Forget about square three, oh that wasn’t me/Like square one, where we fell in love/Forget about square five, I was only half-alive”, you can’t help mourn the loss of a love you didn’t even know you had. As “The Final Incident” comes and goes it leaves behind “Snake”, one of the most beautifully simple and catchy songs they’ve done, Scott singing softly over an acoustic guitar about a draught excluder that he took with him to New York to see his girlfriend.  The more you listen to “Snake” the more you can’t help but fall in love with it, and even though it’s out of place compared to the rest of the album it’s grand ending to an album that does live up to the Scottish Indie-Folk (add in Rock there, too) label it’s been given, but also gives so much more, an honest and passionate look at relationships, drinking, life, and draught excluders.

With “Sing The Greys”, Frightened Rabbit have a solid and majestic debut album, sure to garner them a legion of fans who can relate to the all manner of true-life happenings they sing about.

8/10

Worth checking out: We Were Promised Jetpacks, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Twilight Sad.

Buy Sing the Greys / Download Sing the Greys

“Listen Before You Buy – Sing The Greys”

In anticipation for the release (March 1st in the UK, March 9th the rest of the world) of “The Winter Of Mixed Drinks”, the third album by one of Scotland’s finest bands Frightened Rabbit, I’ll have a week’s worth of goodness (including reviews, videos, interviews and full album streams) leading up to the release day, culminating in a review of the album as well as the full album for your listening head-hole pleasure.

First up; Back story.

Formed in Selkirk, Scotland in 2003, Frightened Rabbit started off as a vehicle for singer Scott Hutchison’s solo shows, eventually roping in his brother Grant on drums and Billy Kennedy on guitar, and today comprising of the former as well as Andy Monaghan (guitarist) and Gordon Skene (keyboards).  They released their debut album “Sing The Greys” on June 5th 2006 on their own label Hit The Fan Records, consisting of only 1,000 copies, which are naturally difficulty to get your hands on these days.  Thankfully I did manage to get my hands on one for a mere $17, but they can cost upwards of $50, and as Frightened Rabbit are sure to become bigger with “The Winter Of Mixed Drinks” that price is sure to rise.

On October 2nd, 2007 they released a remastered version of “Sing The Greys” on FatCat, some of the bits being re-recorded and the album as a whole getting a bigger and more epic sound to it, and all in all releasing two singles from the album, “Be Less Rude” and “The Greys”.

They had already recorded the bulk of what was to be their next album “The Midnight Organ Fight” by the end of 2007 and on March 3rd, 2008 released “Head Rolls Off”, the first single from their (by then) as yet unreleased second album.  ”The Midnight Organ Fight” was released on April 15th, 2008 on FatCat, immediately gaining almost universal critical acclaim.  Some say it’s one of the greatest break-up albums ever recorded, with publications such as NME, Pitchfork, DrownedInSound, Q, Kerrang and others adoring it, as well as artists such as Death Cab For Cutie, Jimmy Eat World, and Biffy Clyro.  Three singles were released from “The Midnight Organ Fight”, “Head Rolls Off”, “Fast Blood”, and “I Feel Better”.

This bring us to 2010, which many are saying is going to be Frightened Rabbit’s year to hit the “big time”.  Having already released two singles from their upcoming third album “The Winter Of Mixed Drinks”, “Swim Until You Can’t See Land” was debuted in May of 2009 and released in November 2009, and “Nothing Like You” released at the tail end of February this year.  There are already a few reviews appearing online of the album, every one of them being positive, and as I said there’s a significant amount of chatter and discussion going on about “The Winter Of Mixed Drinks” being their breakthrough.

With a world tour already underway, festival appearances in the summer announced and undoubtedly at least one more single from the album, here’s hoping so.