So I guess I'll be getting a HWCH ticket then.

Frightened Rabbit on the bill.

I'm off to ATP in the morning.

This will likely be my final post until Monday night/Tuesday sometime when I get back.

Frightened Rabbit are playing Dublin while I'm away. I'd have liked to have seen them, ah well.

Here's their dates:

18 May Sugar Club, Dublin
19 May Dolan’s, Limerick
20 May Auntie Annie’s, Belfast

Frightened Rabbit Irish dates.

I'm still loving The Midnight Organ Fight (which is released physically here today I think, and it's record store day tomorrow with a 20% off everything sale in Road Records, jus' sayin'). Unfortunately I'll be away when they're here.

18 May Sugar Club, Dublin
19 May Dolan’s, Limerick
20 May Auntie Annie’s, Belfast

Here's their video for "Head Rolls Off".



Frightened Rabbit MySpace

I'm drunk, I'm drunk, and you're probably on pills.

I had something of a road to Damascus moment during my second listen to Frightened Rabbit's The Midnight Organ Fight a few days ago. It had been recommended to me by a friend whose tastes I broadly share and she'd been talking about it as though it were an album of the year contender so I first listened to it with expectant ears.

I was totally nonplussed. There was nothing to dislike about the album but at the same time there was nothing that excited me about it. Just another scuzzy sounding indie rock record but with the lyrics sung in a Scottish accent.

But I trust the person who turned me onto them's tastes enough to give them another go. And to me it's still another scuzzy sounding indie rock record. A really fucking good one. Frightened Rabbit follow a path that's already been well travelled by lots of my favourite lyricists, Tom Waits before he met Kathleen and made Swordfishtrombones, Jarvis Cocker circa Different Class, Craig Finn in nearly every song he's every written; it's the one that's signposted "Life is quite often pretty shit and sometimes the only way to get through it is to get wasted, get shitfaced, fall in love every night and wherever possible take comfort in the arms of whoever will have you, even if it's only for a moment Boulevard". But unlike their countrymen Arab Strap who expressed similar sentiments in what is probably my favourite Scottish song ever "The Shy Retirer" and made that sort of existence sound as miserable as it should be Frightened Rabbit at times make it seem euphoric, and they make me feel euphoric.

Recorded music very rarely does that for me, and possibly the reason this album does is that it feels like a live record. There's very little studio trickery present here, to me it sounds like a band going into a room and just making music. Over on the Compost Heap today Darragh blogged about Pavement, he's written a lot over there about his affection for the lo-fi aesthetic and it's one that I share with him. Mine is based on the fact that the music feels honest to me, it may sound like shit from a technical point of view but that sense carries it for me. The Midnight Organ Fire doesn't sound like shit, with Interpol/National/Twilight Sad producer Peter Katis at the helm how could it? But it's got that same quality about it all the same.

So that's why I've stopped persecuting Christians in ancient Palestine.

MP3: Frightened Rabbit - Keep Yourself Warm from The Midnight Organ Fight
MP3: Frightened Rabbit - Old Old Fashioned from The Midnight Organ Fight

Frightened Rabbit toured through Ireland in February. I hadn't heard of them at that point. Bollocks.