Fright Club

FRIGHTENED RABBIT
Words: Mischa Pearlman

The emotional wounds that loomed large over their last album might have healed, but their new record sees Frightened Rabbit on typically melancholic form…

Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchison wasn’t in a good way for a while. Listen to ‘The Midnight Organ Fight’, the band’s acclaimed 2008 album, and it’s clear that things were pretty bad. It’s a no-holds-barred, brutally raw and real break-up record, one that revolves around being fucked – over, up and, in the case of the nihilistic ‘Keep Yourself Warm’, literally. “I’m drunk, I’m drunk, and you’re probably on pills,” he sings. “If we’ve both got the same diseases, it’s irrelevant, girl.” On ‘Poke’, it got worse. “Why won’t our love keel over as it chokes on a bone?” he asked. “We can mourn its passing and then bury it in snow. Or should we kick its cunt in and watch as it dies from bleeding?” Quite. Two years on and both Hutchison’s heart and liver have healed and the band – now a five-piece, completed by Scott’s brother Grant (drums), Billy Kennedy (lead guitar), Andy Monaghan (bass/keyboards) and multi instrumentalist Gordon Skene – have released their third album, ‘The Winter Of Mixed Drinks’. Despite its title, nerves are less frazzled, hangovers less frequent, emotions less fraught. Life has got better, thanks to the band’s ever-increasing international success and critical acclaim. That doesn’t mean, however, that life was any easier during the making of this album. “At the end of our last tour, we were feeling lost and worn out and ruined,” explains Scott. “We all felt pretty fucked, and I think that was symptomatic of how hard we’d been pushing ourselves, touring and, to be honest, drinking. The only thing I knew how to write about after that was that feeling. I didn’t want to write a record that referenced being in a band – I always find that a bit nauseating – but I was definitely keen to express the state of mind we were all in.” It takes only a cursory listen to understand that state of mind. The broken heart may be mended, but an overwhelming sense of isolation and uncertainty permeates the record, much of which is bathed in imagery of being lost at sea. “I wrote the record in a coastal village,” explains Scott. “Being there was helping me maintain some sort of equilibrium after everything, but it was also creeping in when I was trying to describe how I’d felt over the last couple of months. It seemed like the natural way to write about it.” It’s also the first Frightened Rabbit album written specifically with an audience in mind. ‘The Midnight Organ Fight’ was written by Scott predominantly for himself as a way to deal with the demons of a failing/failed relationship, but in the wake of its success, Frightened Rabbit has mutated from being one man’s personal, cathartic project into a proper job. Writing this record, they felt a pressure and weight of expectation from being in the limelight that they never had before. Unsurprisingly, that helped shape the record. “There was no way I could escape that,” says Scott. “As much as I tried to put that to the back of my mind, I couldn’t, and it made me write the record in a very different way. Lyrically, it’s a lot more oblique, a lot less personal. I hope it’s a lot less cloying!” He laughs, and as he does, it’s clear that he has moved on. Yet those old songs and feelings still live on. “I’m aware,” he says, “that, now, there are people in the audience for whom the songs mean a lot more to them than they do to me. It’s not so much about me anymore. Which is good.” You see, for a while, Scott Hutchison wasn’t in a good way. But that was before. This is now. ‘The Winter Of Mixed Drinks’ is the sound of someone moving on. He’s picked himself up, filed away old photographs and memories, drunk away those awful times and puked them back up again, leaving them to dissolve in the bile. Hell, he’s even written a song called ‘Not Miserable’. “I’m not!” he laughs heartily. “I’m fine. I wrote that song as a joke, because I kept on getting described as miserable. But this album, I tried to challenge myself. I’d never actually written a song about being happy and joyful. I thought it was about time.”

‘The Winter Of Mixed Drinks’ is released on FatCat on March 1st.