Frightened Rabbit are the critics' favourites on both side of the English Channel and want nothing else than to build a career from scratch using good songs. We found out what it is that scares the Scottish rabbits: the thought of becoming the victims of image hysteria and hype.
No need to worry about that, you might say when seeing them in their concert attire (also, incidentally, their everyday attire): wornout shoes, brownish shirts with matching jeans and the mandatory laissez-faire beard. They are as unpretentious and obliging as they are unkempt and, so they claim, as broke as they are critically praised. That's saying something: their new album, 'The Midnight Organ Flight', got 6 stars from Gaffa and Soundvenue (Denmark's two biggest music magazines, ed.), 8,1 from Pitchfork and 8/10 from NME. Actually, guitarist and singer Scott Hutchinson claims that they would have got 9/10 from the latter if the editor hadn't changed the review so that it wouldn't divert the attention from the more well-known bands.
'NME can make or break a band. They rule the charts,' he says. 'They should focus on using their powers for good instead.' Like Frightened Rabbit? 'It would be great to be on the cover of NME and get that kind of attention and hype,' Scott admits, 'but it would last maybe a year. We're aiming for a longer career.'
Right now the band are at the bottom of the ladder and relatively unknown outside the UK, but are planning to tour both Europe and Australia with their album. 'Midnight Organ Flight' offers intimate confessionals backed by indie guitars – not the most original of ideas, but what they lack in groundbreaking style, they make up for in honesty and substance. 'Some bands need a certain image to hide their lack of content,' say Scott and his brother Grant. 'We're more interested in how it sounds than how it looks.'
Luckily for them, their label Fat Cat (also housing Animal Collective and Sigur Rós) agree and have gone a long way to send them out into the world – without stylists. If the critical acclaim sells a million records for them and sees them at the bigger venues, maybe things will change. 'We'd like to upgrade our live show eventually, but right now we're focusing on giving the audience a more raw and energetic show than if they just heard the music at home,' Scott says. You can make a virtue out of necessity, so if you don't have big money to spend on stage, you need big words.
'Our goal is to be incredibly honest and not have any barrier between ourselves and the music.' It is hard to imagine Scott and Grant five years from now as guests on David Letterman wearing matching suits and rock star attitudes. There's just not enough hype about them yet, but maybe it's just a matter of time and money. And more of both.
The Hutchinson brothers haven't thought much about their music as a business yet, they would just like to make a living from it. They don't own iPods, have an unfinished webpage, and still think in albums and objects you can hold in your hands. Their stock is in their songs and nothing else, which might explain why they haven't achieved greater commercial success yet, despite the rave reviews.
They don't focus on the money, but on playing, writing and touring wherever their label tells them to go. Today, this attitude seems almost naïve, seeing as time is running out for bands that have nothing creative to offer apart from the CD. Maybe Frightened Rabbit will be one of those obscure indie bands, loved by critics, known by no one. Or maybe they'll end up on the front page of the NME: shaved, updated and with a flamboyant headline: 'We want to save rock with good songs.'
article for Bandbase, May 2008
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