Frightened Rabbit
The Midnight Organ Fight
8.5 / 10
Love is hell. Vocalist and guitarist Scott Hutchinson of Frightened Rabbit knows this well. The Midnight Organ Fight, a collection of paradoxical songs that evince Hutchinson’s inability to afford therapy, is Frightened Rabbit’s follow-up to their 2006 debut, Sing The Greys. Hutchinson’s biting lyrics bristle with self doubt and desperation evoke the tenuous time following a breakup. The album comes off like a mixtape dropped on the doorstep of an ex-lover who has moved on in life. The band is rounded out by Hutchinson’s brother Grant on drums and Billy Kennedy on guitar.
If art is derived from pain then Hutchinson is the curator of Fight’s 14 song exhibit. “The Modern Leper” is the album’s upbeat opener and announces the blueprint for the next 48 minutes – impotently hopeful lyrics married with surging instrumentation flirting with, and sometimes achieving, transcendence.
“I Feel Better” is an anthemic epiphany exclaiming, “This is the last song I’ll write about you.” Fast forward seven songs to “Backwards Walk” and Hutchinson can’t quite embrace his newfound freedom. The song’s subject is a work in progress mirroring the actual song. It builds slowly, fostering expectations of a stadium-sized chorus that will swoop in and lift the song above its melancholy disposition. Instead the listener gets a sardonically or sincerely (or both) delivered “You’re the shit and I’m knee deep in it,” repeated over hypnotic hand claps and bass drums that stop just as they are gaining steam.
Failing to deliver on expectations might have landed Hutchinson in this predicament, but by representing this musically, the song is infused with an honesty and transparency that are cornerstones of The Midnight Organ Fight. The juxtaposition of naked lyrical expository and optimistic musicality renders Frightened Rabbit’s sophomore album a gorgeously complex descent into one man's hell.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
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