Frightened Rabbit may not be the name on the tip of everyone’s tongues, they may not be the most fashionable band in the world, but in the hearts of a select few, they’ve found a home. This fanbase looks set to be expanded with the release of their fourth studio album, Pedestrian Verse.
Some may wonder exactly what such a title could refer to. Scott Hutchison, the band’s frontman and lyricist explains that it has a dual function. Firstly, it presents a challenge to Scott on behalf of album reviewers everywhere – “I was going to get pelters if I wrote lyrically pedestrian material.” “It was a gauntlet to throw down to myself.” It also represents a change in focus – “I was kind of interested in trying to write a little bit less about by own life and widening the scope. That’s what I started off intending to write the whole album about, but it didn’t quite work out like that.” It was a change in attitude from their breakthrough, The Midnight Organ Fight – “I started to find that a bit icky – singing about such personal stuff every night on tour it struck me that it was self-indulgent and not really fair on people in my life at that time.”
This album is also a total departure from its predecessor, The Winter of Mixed Drinks, which took a more restrictive response to its subject matter – “I did achieve what I wanted to achieve with the last album, but, with hindsight, I was wrong to want that.”
This may seem a little strange to Frabbit fans, who expect a certain degree of autobiography in the work of the Selkirk five-piece. However, they shouldn’t be worried – “I started writing the album with that in mind, but stuff happened in my personal life, and I couldn’t seem to get back on track with the record I wanted to make.”
If that sounds gloomy and depressing, it’s for a reason. Frightened Rabbit are often labelled with such adjectives (and have been called gloom-rockers, whatever they are). Hutchison explains that they have a distinctively Scottish approach to such tags – “what a lot of Scottish artists tend to do is tinge every sort of gloomy miserable aspect with a sort of slight sense of humour and a slight tongue in cheek, but certainly with us, there’s always a hopeful lift at the end.” Scott is really happy to be part of this scene, describing it as “a very fucking good pigeonhole”. The ability to call his one-time heroes his peers is something he seems to relish, seeing himself as “part of something that [he’d] grown up idolising.”
What does the future hold for Frightened Rabbit? Well, if the quality of their recent EPs and singles are anything to go by, massive success should be on the cards. Scott reveals that there is a greater plan at work though – “The plan is always to take the band to places that we’ve never been before … I could definitely see us doing one more record then looking at what else we could possibly do, changing things or taking an extended break.” (don’t worry, this is all just musings at the moment!).
Frightened Rabbit have hit the big time, writing songs with Aidan Moffat of Arab Strap and recording covers of Elton John and Kiki Dee with Craig Finn of the Hold Steady (it needs to be heard to be believed!). Here’s to a great future for them, and (hopefully) a great new album in a few weeks!
Frightened Rabbit are touring in February and Pedestrian Verse is released on the 4th February.
