Frightened Rabbit – Pedestrian
Verse
Atlantic, 2013
The display of raw emotional damage Scott Hutchinson poured into Frightened Rabbit’s second album The Modern Organ Fight didn’t necessarily reinvent the break-up album. It did, however, approach the time-worn subject with the sort of rawness and honesty and embarrassing detail that ranked it right up there with the best of them. Is the break-up album a modern phenomena? Certainly there’s a graph showing a marked upswing in the last decade of break-up albums. We could pair it with a graph illustrating the rise of morbid young men having easier access to recording equipment and music distribution via the Internet. Either way, as a connoisseur of the break-up album and someone who tends to approach break-ups head on and dive into a sea of misery, The Modern Organ Fight was one of the best I’d ever heard. Better than Blood on the Tracks. Better than Dear You. It’s my favorite, and I didn’t even listen to it during a break-up. I didn’t even listen to it the year it came out. I didn’t come around to Frightened Rabbit until 2009, the year my wife and I started dating and falling in love. The weirdest thing is that we fell more in love with each other while listening to that album and blabbing about how great it was.
In the three years since Frightened Rabbit has fought their way to my Top 5. The Winter of Mixed Drinks was my favorite record of 2010 and my love for this band is well known and widespread. So I was pleasantly surprised that I forgot Pedestrian Verse was even coming out and thanks to the Internet, I didn’t even have to go out to a store, find a place to park, and trudge through the snow to get it. Pedestrian Verse served as the soundtrack to a lengthy errand I had to run out to suburban Minneapolis and when I got home I burned a copy for the CD player and I’ve been listening to it since 2PM. And I’m still wrapping my head around how such a scrappy little band full of all these magnificent rough edges cleaned themselves up and put out a record that is more beautifully produced, sonically diverse, and cohesive than their previous records. But your favorite bands do that. They surprise you. That’s why they’re your favorite bands (or not, I guess, but I’ve got a real soft spot for bands that make the effort to keep pushing their limits).
The display of raw emotional damage Scott Hutchinson poured into Frightened Rabbit’s second album The Modern Organ Fight didn’t necessarily reinvent the break-up album. It did, however, approach the time-worn subject with the sort of rawness and honesty and embarrassing detail that ranked it right up there with the best of them. Is the break-up album a modern phenomena? Certainly there’s a graph showing a marked upswing in the last decade of break-up albums. We could pair it with a graph illustrating the rise of morbid young men having easier access to recording equipment and music distribution via the Internet. Either way, as a connoisseur of the break-up album and someone who tends to approach break-ups head on and dive into a sea of misery, The Modern Organ Fight was one of the best I’d ever heard. Better than Blood on the Tracks. Better than Dear You. It’s my favorite, and I didn’t even listen to it during a break-up. I didn’t even listen to it the year it came out. I didn’t come around to Frightened Rabbit until 2009, the year my wife and I started dating and falling in love. The weirdest thing is that we fell more in love with each other while listening to that album and blabbing about how great it was.
In the three years since Frightened Rabbit has fought their way to my Top 5. The Winter of Mixed Drinks was my favorite record of 2010 and my love for this band is well known and widespread. So I was pleasantly surprised that I forgot Pedestrian Verse was even coming out and thanks to the Internet, I didn’t even have to go out to a store, find a place to park, and trudge through the snow to get it. Pedestrian Verse served as the soundtrack to a lengthy errand I had to run out to suburban Minneapolis and when I got home I burned a copy for the CD player and I’ve been listening to it since 2PM. And I’m still wrapping my head around how such a scrappy little band full of all these magnificent rough edges cleaned themselves up and put out a record that is more beautifully produced, sonically diverse, and cohesive than their previous records. But your favorite bands do that. They surprise you. That’s why they’re your favorite bands (or not, I guess, but I’ve got a real soft spot for bands that make the effort to keep pushing their limits).
Unfortunately, after the first four, really quite excellent tracks, Pedestrian Verse hits the skids with a one-two punch of repetitive non-starters—“Late March Death March” and “December Traditions”. After the first few spins, I almost immadetly skipped these two. “Late March Death March” reminds me of one of those Silversun Pickups songs (or any modern rock song for that matter) that repeats the chorus for five minutes and really doesn’t try to construct anything. “December Traditions” is just plain murky. A bleak, maudlin thing that brings things to a grinding halt.
And then the chiming guitars of “Housing (in)” come to the
rescue and it’s smooth sailing. “State Hospital” is a minor masterpiece and
illustrates the brilliant results Scott Hutchinson is capable of when he steps
away from the microscope that analyzes his own life and tells a different kind
of story. It proves that Hutchinson can write a super serious song without
getting overwrought (which is ultimately why “December Traditions” leaves such
an awful taste in my mouth). It’s beautiful and huge and dynamic and maybe
Frightened Rabbit’s most accomplished track to date. “Dead Now” displays
Hutchinson’s obsession with death as a metaphor, a trick he’s perfected over
the last two FR albums. What keeps tracks like these from becoming too glum is
the dark humor and the bright melodies that make refrains like “There’s
something wrong with me” sound almost hopeful.
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