Frightened Rabbit: “I don’t want to sound indulgent”

(Muso's Guide, May 17, 2009)

Interview

If you’ve swooned at the feet of heartwarming, romantic Caledonian folk over the last year or so, chances are it’s down to honey-tongued Scott Hutchison.

As singer and creative doyen of Frightened Rabbit, the Selkirk native’s broad Scottish burr makes sport of the heartache of youth; from broken hearts to lost loves and all of Cupid’s treachery in between, this young Rabbit’s got a grasp of the emotional and no mistake.

After a year living with the runaway success of 2008’s The Midnight Organ Fight, Scott has been holed up in Fife demoing tracks for the band’s as-yet-untitled follow-up record, which promises to be every bit as magical as fans would expect - but there are hints that the lyrical emphasis may be in for a shift.

It’s no secret that Scott has harvested his own experiences for his astonishingly personal lyrics - but he is the first to admit that he didn’t forsee the sheer audience for his angst.

He explains: “I did expose myself. When I wrote those songs, we didn’t really have much of a fanbase at all, and then all of a sudden your album’s released and all these thoughts that were put down in your bedroom onto a cassette tape are now completely public.”

From the adolescent ankle-sock drama of a bedsit balladeer to featuring on youth-orientated Channel 4 shows - that was some transition.

“Yeah, I don’t think it would have been possible to make it that personal if we had known that it would end up on the soundtrack to Hollyoaks.” He laughs.

But the move to the X-rated Grange Hill signified a sea change indeed for the Scottish quartet, and success is now something of a close personal friend. In fact, after a successful SXSW in 2008, Frightened Rabbit are even making it big stateside. Scott says it’s no surprise that they hit the right note in the U.S.

“They’re quite fond of Scottish things, so we fit into that bracket. It’s also not inaccurate to say that I take a fair amount of influence from Americana - bands like Wilco and people like Ryan Adams have certainly seeped into stuff that I do. There’s a folkiness there that they definitely are in tune with.”

In talking to Scott, it’s important to note that there is very little in the way of hubris. So much so that, in saying “Americans just like us” matter-of-factly, he quickly follows it up with: “I think it has to do with timing and luck and one or two of the right people getting into your music.”

Anyone who has found themselves spellbound by any of FR’s two studio albums will note that this success owes nothing to luck, and everything to the skill of good songwriting.

But Scott is the first to admit that he finds musical inspiration in the strangest of places - for example, when the band covered N-Trance’s 1995 breakbeat hardcore classic ‘Set You Free’.

Scott laughs at the memory: “There’s something stirring inside you - the chords or something really connected with me. I didn’t really mind and I still don’t that it was in this kind of cheesy garish 90s package with all the production values. There’s something about it melodically that sticks with me. I love it, and as long as I covered it from that point of you. I hope people recognise that I was being earnest. We all have a memory of N-Trance and someone else… you know… touching and all that.”

Blimey! To spare Muso’s blushes, we divert onto other, more current, musical influences.

“I’ve been saying my favourite band in the world just now is The Hold Steady. I remember seeing them first at a festival, and it was the natural way it all just came out - they had no pretences, they weren’t styled, they were just playing the music that kind of that was honest to them.”

Up in Fife writing Frightened Rabbit’s new record will owe something to that honesty, Scott reveals - but he’s keen to point out that there will be less heartache in the new material - less of himself laid bare.

“I don’t think it’s a bad thing necessarily, but that album is a kind of one-off for me as far as letting that much of myself into it. I don’t really want to do that again, it’s just going to start sounding indulgent as well!

“This time around it’s less specific, less definitely about one person or even me. I suppose I’m trying to write about notions rather than actual events. I still think a record should tie together under one banner as an album under which all the songs fall. I’d like to make it a bit more outrospective and allow people a bit more freedom with what I’m talking about and allow them to come up with their own perspective on what it is rather than me dictating to them. I think I covered that aspect of life quite comprehensively on the last record. It was nice to get it all out, but this is a much more positive album.”

For those champing at the bit to get their ears round the new material, there’s some great news - Scott isn’t wasting any time!

“I want to get the record done - we’re looking at going to record around the beginning of June. So for like a month or two in the studio and then after that it’s up to the label. I’d love it to come out this year because, like, talking about the Hold Steady, they seem to keep producing material and I like that work ethic and I think, rather than it being, “Oh, there’s another Frightened Rabbit album coming out!”, just put one out there when people are least expecting it.”

And of the new material - are the fans to expect some real balls-out rock numbers - just to ring the changes?

“I can’t do that, I don’t know why. I always feel like it sounds a little bit cheesy! I love that kind of music, at the same time, but I just think I’m kind of frustrated that I’m incapable of doing it and it always does end up leaning towards the darker side of things. Whether I’m feeling sad or not, I find more interest in the shadowy bits of life - I can’t help it.”

In the name of uniquely sweet and wonderful music, here’s hoping that Scott keeps a watch on those shadows for a while longer.

Duke Special - I Never Thought This Day Would Come

(Muso's Guide, May 9, 2009)

Album review

Despite plugging away at music industry success for the more than a decade, Duke Special brings his own peculiarly gentle pop ever-closer to mainstream success with I Never Thought This Day Would Come, his third long-form studio album.

So it’s an ‘A’ for effort and a ‘C’ for success… Until now.

Hailing from Northern Ireland, the Duke, also known as Peter Wilson, cuts a bizarre figure, with dreadlocks to his shoulders and thick black eyeliner. Certainly not the usual on the streets of his homeland.

I Never Thought This Day Would Come does plough a similar furrow to its predecessor, 2007’s Songs From The Deep Forest - tuneful and soulful, it boasts emotive language of romance and heartbreak, swathed in piano and imbued with a maturity beyond Wilson’s 29 years.

Opener ‘Mocking Bird Wish Me Luck’ is a delightfully smooth ballad on piano, saturated with the loss of a young love. “Right at the start of me/You stole a part of me”, the lyric goes, pleading for luck for the future, drenched with uncertainty and insecurity. As with all of his recorded output, Wilson’s gentle Co. Antrim vowels come over clearly in what amounts to heavily-accented singing, but far from irritating Snow Patrol-style, the result is a gentle lullaby of a vocal.

Single ‘Sweet Kisses’ is an early contender for single of the year, all bombastic rhythms and singalong chorus. The 1970s-style pomp is a radio-friendly touch, but the lyrics don’t waver from that ‘lost love’ angle Wilson does so well: “It was boom boom back when we were friends/Now the boo hoos tell me it’s the end” Wilson cites, in near-nonsense, but it’s pop, and it works. One of the happiest ever songs about heartbreak - behind, perhaps, The Avalanches’ ‘Since I Left You’.

The title track is another balladic number, coming off like a modern-day ‘Que Sera Sera’. “Stuck on a note/An old song I wrote/On a tape I cannot rewind”, goes Wilson’s simple poetry. Some of the tracks here miss the target slightly - ‘Flesh And Blood Dance’ is a music hall-swagger too far - but the lasting memory of singalongability and the very artistry of the words and music on show here reveal Wilson’s true talent for pop.

Success suddenly seems guaranteed.

Booker T. Jones - Potato Hole

(Muso's Guide, May 7, 2009)

Album review

Legendary musicians are ten a penny these days. Haven’t you heard it’s an ageing population?

Take Booker T. Jones. Best known for fronting instrumental Booker T. and the MGs, they set dance floors alight in 1962 with the Hammond organ-drenched, bass-driven ‘Green Onions’. Almost 50 years later and ‘Green Onions’ is still the essence of cool, all the cooler when you find out that Booker T. Jones penned the hit while he was still in high school.

So a new record from this gent is really something to write home about.

Kicking off with the organ-led ‘Pound It Out’, Potato Hole embraces the modern era in a way which is quite staggering, the song roughly hewn from rock guitar and sweltering hot. Throughout the ten tracks, Jones’ prodigious talent for the keys is instrumentally augmented by Drive By Truckers, an Athens, Georgia band with roots in country and alternative rock.

The influence of the Truckers’ sound shows throughout, with a heaviness to the guitar sound which sits surprisingly well with Jones’ Hammond B3 noodlings. What’s amazing is the new life that someone like Booker T. Jones can breathe into the music he touches. At the ripe old age of 64, he is taking on tracks like ‘Hey Ya’ by Outkast and making them zing afresh, with the Truckers’ help.

There is a certain person who will purchase Potato Hole - probably a die-hard fan, certainly an experimental listener. Sometimes it does have the impact of a pan pipes moods CD, where the melody is pounded out on an organ instead of in vocals, but it’s still a very interesting musical construction, and one which should be supported.

The album highlight has to be ‘Native New Yorker’, exhibiting grouchy guitars plundering through the intro, before a truly meaty rock track strikes up, underpinned all the while by Jones’ skillful keys.

Legends are everywhere - appreciate them while they’re still around.

The Horrors - Primary Colours

(Muso's Guide, May 6, 2009)

Album review

If The Horrors are to be taken seriously, there must be a new world order.

A hair band of skinny goths, they were drowning in eyeliner and hair dye when they showed up on the doorstep in 2007, but like stray kittens, they played upon the affections of the music world and they were allowed in.

Our reward? Strange House, a record which stretched wall-to-wall with bizarre characters, like Morgan who wanted to kill his family, or the glove festishist who made sport out of fondling handware. And don’t even mention Sheena, a grotesque slut of the imagination.

Suffice it to say, these artschool haircuts were a surprise hit, but had one-hit wonder scrawled all over them - in someone else’s blood, naturally. With all this in mind, it’s best to imagine the Primary Colours is a musical emission of a different band.

Oh, it still has The Horrors’ hallmarks - Faris Badwan’s ghoulish vocal backed with Spider Webb’s relentless keyboards. But somewhere in the Strange House these lipstick Lovecraftians lost their way - and found an altogether new path.

The clue to a new direction came early on, with scout single ‘Sea Within A Sea’. A delicious rumble of gratuitous weirdness, it nonetheless grabbed the synapses by their very roots. With album opener ‘Mirror’s Image’, the five-piece have revisited the great echo sound of the single, making a dancier effort and striking out in the direction of many 1980s bands of repute, in particular Echo and The Bunnymen and Simple Minds.

Without being glib, those references are far from insulting. More inferring that Badwan has mastered a malevolent growl the like of the masterful Ian McCulloch all the while backed with the stadium-friendly instrumentalism of a band far beyond their years. The howl Badwan lets out is underpinned by accomplished keys, and the rhythm gives it all a smooth, slightly unnerving base.

‘Three Decades’ starts out with the darker climes of an instrumental piece, with Webb’s organ sweeping through the landscape like an inclement breeze. Badwan again exhibits a much less stylised vocal than on their first record, and the result of everything is a mammoth musical soundscape peppered with oddity and intrigue.

As on their first recordings, Primary Colours sees The Horrors take the best parts of goth and marry them with a punk rock sensibility. But instead of giving birth to a most uneasy alliance as on Strange House, the delight here is the The Horrors have stretched further and gotten something greater out of themselves.

There’s a talent on show on Primary Colours which needs to be taken very seriously indeed.

The Mission District - Heartbreaker

(Musos's Guide, May 4, 2009)

Single review

If image is nine tenths of a band, then The Mission District are truly a gift for record executives looking for the freshest faces around.

Five pretty boys with cheekbones that could slice and dice Zac Efron, these Montreal natives put the “eh” into “wahey!”. But enough about them being cute Canadians. To the music - it’s not all style over substance.

This terrific slice of radio-friendly 80s pop exhibits skills as razor-sharp as those cheekbones. Imagine a guitar pop sound which marries the tunefulness of Stephen “Tin Tin” Duffy with the smarts of Nick Lowe, and you’re en route to ‘Heartbreaker’.

Like A-Ha meeting The Killers in an all-ages indie disco, the vocal smacks of teenage repression, all angsty teen concerns and adolescent dramas: “I will break your heart tonight/Cos this is what we do” goes the chorus line, simply perfect for the Gossip Girl soundtrack.

Currently gearing up for a tour with Elliot Minor after a support sting with McFly, it’s pretty clear that The Mission District’s trajectory is straight down Main Street, Tweensville, but it’d be a shame to write them off as a teen dream.

Although tunefully bizarrely reminiscent of Fergie’s ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’, throughout the singalong pop hit romps like a son of Busted, slick and over-produced, sure, but sweet, summery and insanely catchy.

Blackbud - Blackbud

(AU magazine, May 2009)
Hailing from the dark centre of rawk - Wiltshire - Blackbud's sophomore release is proof positive that there are bright young things out there, hard at work in the name of good music. Deliciously melodic 'Left Your Arms Empty' opens with a striking male vocal, building to a sweeping finish which speaks of a more mature band. Through rockier 'Love Comes So Easy' to nigh-on prog 'Outside Looking In', Blackbud routinely claim their musical stripes. The record is rife with influence - Led Zeppelin and the Stones on the guitar, Ryan Adams and Jeff Buckley on the vocals - but they do not sacrifice their fresh, youthful exuberance in paying their respects. On the strength of this release, Blackbud are definitely in bloom.

Fishbone - Fishbone Live In Bordeaux

(AU magazine, May 2009)
Live records are always for the fans, and it would be churlish to suggest that Fishbone Live In Bordeaux is anything other than a reaffirmation of that rule. An LA band with an astonishing history - 30 years, ten albums - Fishbone have a fanbase to make greener musicians salivate, which means this sells itself. Buy it if you like ska, rock, funk, reggae or jazz. Better yet, buy it if you like Fishbone. The DVD is more of the same in visual form.

Prefuse 73- Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian

(AU magazine, May 2009)

If you know hip-hip and avante-rock, you'll know Guillermo Scott Herren, aka Prefuse 73. A producer and artist, here he has gifted his fifth studio album under that moniker, a 29-track sonic behemoth with nothing like a defining characteristic. There's a lot of info about the recording techniques Herren has utilised here, but beyond the yawnsome tech speak, it's all sounding really interesting. 'Parachute Parador' boasts a delicious drum machine pound, while 'Simple Loop Choir' is awash with vocoder magic, all sweeping sonic mass and confusion. It's true, Prefuse 73 is from a weird world, but it's truly fascinating too.

Real life: "I refuse to let MS rule my life"

(Somerfield magazine, May 2009)