Frightened Rabbit released their newest album on March 1st, and the cheetah was lucky enough to score a cop (thank god for imports, yeah?). And its good. Its very good.
One of the hardest things about their last album, for all of its brilliance, was that the entirety of the album depended on the repeat of the same structure. A good structure at that, and an interesting way to make the album as hard hitting as it ultimately was, but the adherence to this theme was undercut by the unbelievable quality of the first song "The Modern Leper." It made the album hard to access when they perfected the format on that first shot. And while songs like "The Twist" took cues from LCD Soundsystem, among others, to experiment and make the album one of the finest of 2008, and the decade as a whole, the album never entirely clicked as a whole.
So what to think about this new effort? How can it stack up against an album whose biggest flaw was that one of its songs was
too good? The answer is - reverse the format. Explore different themes. For as similar as something like Frightened Rabbit will always sound to American ears, it couldn't be anymore different. Like opposing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, the the only thing that makes them so different is how similar they are.
This album is, in certain places, simply bigger. Almost like a Snow Patrol or a Coldplay, and I mean that in the kindest sense, this album sounds like Frightened Rabbit shooting for the edges of a stadium, writing songs that use their essential intimateness to skyrocket their album to the most essential and meaningful of places. Songs like "The Loneliness and the Scream" and "Skip the Youth" perhaps emphasize this the most, with choruses whose chants reach almost anthemic levels.
None of which is to say that that Frightened Rabbit has traded any of their defining intelligence or speed of emotion to create The Winter of Mixed Drinks. Whereas the last album took a microscope to one man's crises of emotion and loss, an examination of the self-loathing and pain of that situation, here we see Scott Hutchinsen look at ideas such as escape, freedom and rejuvenation. This is an album where we see our hero learn to accept to move on, acutely aware of what he felt but with a new direction to send his attention. The lead singles most acutely bring this to the listener's attention, "Swim Until You Cant See Land" sounding like the protagonist doing exactly what the title describes, before finally finding the realization he needs to move his psyche forward. "Nothing Like You," which is as close to "The Modern Leper" as the album comes, as potentially depressing as the title sounds, contains lyrics as simple and as poignant as "She was not the cure for cancer."
So here we are. An album with a wider range, one that flows smoother than their last effort. But one which never quite reaches the emotional rawness of The Midnight Organ Fight. I cant say that this album is as good as their last effort, but I can definitely say that I like it as much.
((cheetah loves))
Frightened Rabbit -
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