(Muso's Guide, December 12, 2008)
Single reviews
It is getting terribly hard to pigeonhole music these days. Alright, bands don’t like it. After all, why should they be forced into a niche with some other people who have similar haircuts or a female bassist too? They spend their time making art which is built to be unique and interesting in its own right, and they deserve some respect for their wishes.
Hahahaha. No, really.
Listen, that band makes one record every 18 months and calls it their very own. Music journalists - and, more importantly, fans - listen to hundreds of records every year. They hear new music on BBC radio, on commercial stations, in clubs, in pubs, at gigs, on music television, on YouTube, as mobile ringtones on the bus. And that’s not even thinking about those records they decide to buy and take home - or download - as their very own musical pet, to play ad naseum until they hear about something hipper.
Put that way, is it any wonder that there are pigeonholes? But they were meant to make things easier, and that’s not the case in 2008.
Sure, Frightened Rabbit could be loosely construed to be folk… Or are they anti-folk? Are they contemporary folk, or folk revival? Maybe folk rock or folk blues? It’s a nightmare trying to pigeonhole this Rabbit.
Suffice it to say, ‘Last Tango In Brooklyn’ is a dainty little number. It has gentle guitar strumming - complete with the comforting pluck of the fingers on the strings - and starts out telling a non-too-savoury tale of two young people getting naked.
In a broad Scottish burr, singer Scott Hutchison reports that “there is nothing sadder than sad sad sex” - so far, so tawdry - and the whole thing seems a little too much like a self-help session for the young and the restless - he slept with someone he wishes he hadn’t, so far, so 90210.
How lovely, then, that the song blossoms into something much nicer. There’s another girl, you see, who Scott is in love with, and he’s planning on singing his way back into her heart - because “the fun stuff is not so fun without you”. And therein lies the story - growing grander, Scott sings of his “two left feet” keeping him from going out tonight, as percussive aid in the form of jaunty tambourines comes in, and the repeated “the fun stuff is not so fun without you” reiterates the loss of a love of life. “I’m quite alright, I’m not depressed - most of the time” he assures somewhat hollowly, but it’s too late, we know that he’s a-hurtin’, and it’s thanks to his merry band of backing singers that the message is really driven home.
Identifying whereabouts to find Frightened Rabbit in your local independent record store would be a whole lot easier if they would just commit to a genre, but sometime you gotta make an exception - seek them out, no matter how tricky their classification.
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