Skip to main content

Frightened Rabbit is Ill But They're Not Dead

By

I forgot to mention you can dance to it


Sounds Like: Ten years ago you left your mother and father and sisters and your best friend and your good friends and you promised to write and you meant what you said and you tried to you really really tried to call but there were waves and the night swallowed everyone and the food on the islands and those accents and all the sounds from across the desert and it's funny what makes you miss Kansas and you finally come back not for good but you return even if only for one day and we're all there and this is what we sound like when we finally see you again.

RIYL: Josh Ritter, Hefner, The Shins, Elvis Perkins, Richard Buckner

Reaction: It is difficult to hate a defenseless fluffy mammal. It's even harder to listen to Scottish alt-folk-singer-songwriter-laddie-lads Frightened Rabbit and not feel the hot rush of inspiration creeping through the notches in your spine. I have a tendency to gush about bands I like, but who can fault a band that opens with an emotional hurricane of a song and calls it "Modern Leper"? Surely this is a not a band for hipsters and scenesters, but a band for poets. Deftly shrouded in spirited harmonics lies the doubting voice of an anxious, confounded character. His are questions and revelations sung at top volume to portray their inspired nature--or so we are led to believe. He could, of course, be lying through his tilted Hibernian grill. Regardless, he's the only one I've heard who can sing "choo-choo train" and be taken seriously.

Band :: Frightened Rabbit

Album :: The Midnight Organ Fight

Song :: I Feel Better



Comments

Anonymous said…
I bought it am very very happy now. Its fall here and this sounds perfect playing through the house as the grey storms come over the mountains toward my house.

These two bands, you would like them cause these guys rip a little from the first, and the second is just great: The long winters. The lord dog bird.

DZ
22 September, 2008
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lucero Video for "Darken My Door"

By
Darken My Door from Lucero on Vimeo . It's good to see that a serious band doesn't have to take itself seriously. Even better when a band's fans don't take them too seriously. "Darken My Door" off of Lucero's latest album, 1372 Overton Park , is a song about losing stuff--girlfriend, money, dignity. In fact, a lot of Lucero's songs are like that, but I'm not getting into that now. I'm talking about the video, which has so much to love. Obviously, I love the fact director Alex Mecum has used a puppet as the protagonist. But it's what the puppet does that makes this video so much fun. Puppet eating chili dogs, puppet drinking whiskey, puppet giving blow jobs . . . Hell, there's even puppet vomit! It's ridiculous, yes, but also tragic. By the end of the video, if you don't feel a little sorry for the scruffy faced whore puppet, then you have no soul. Here's a little more about the videos for Lucero's new album: To promot...
Post a Comment
Read more

Okkervil River, Wellington, New Zealand :: Live Music Review

By
There are energetic drummers, and then there is Travis Nelson. Truly, he is 'Animal.' Okkervil River albums have so much personality, the songs themselves become characters: players, people in the guise of animals or gods (and who can tell the difference sometimes?). And like watching a melodrama, we are witness to emotions that heave and plummet with frightening force. The songs can be drunken youth: the rotund boots on their feet knocking wildly on every surface. Or they can be villainous and smart, full of smiles and wishing-you-well up to the second they thrust the dagger into your belly. Pitched, lust-crazed, calculated: that is one half of an Okkervil album. The other emotion is equally intense in its thick, slow agony: the eternity it takes to remove the knife, knowing you have it all to do over. And so it goes: soaring, drunk, angry, knife, stab, agony, pull-it-out-and-let's-do-it-again. At the San Fransisco Bathhouse in Wellington, New Zealand, on a crisp early a...
2 comments
Read more

Best Music of 2008 [Last.FM gobbles our scrobbles]

By
Internet radio / social network / music discover tool Last.FM has released its Best of 2008 list. There are going to be dozens of "best" lists coming out in the next few weeks, but this one should command your attention. The list is not based on radio play, and it is not based on best selling albums. It is based on the number of times we (that's the royal "we" in all it's regal garb) have played tracks from our iTunes, iPods, Songbirds, or any other player that allows scrobbling. It is based on what we wanted to hear. We pressed play. We made the playlists. The only fault I can find lies in the Top 10 Tracks, which basically MGMT and Colplay. But that's what you get with raw data. To me, the Artists list is the most compelling. You will find no Kanye West on this list; no Britney and no Janet. You will only find the artists played incessantly and obsessively.
3 comments
Read more