Frightened Rabbit interview - Bold bunnies in spotlight, not headlights

This is an interview from The Herald I did with Frightened Rabbit that appeared in the paper on December 20, 2007. Since I couldn't find it anywhere online as I prepared to preview them for STV's RockNess coverage this year (expect some more articles up there soon), I thought I'd put it onto this here blog. They're doing pretty well now, for which I of course claim full credit... Though strangely I've not seen any royalty cheques yet. Enjoy!

They are a hotly tipped act for 2008 who thrive on the crackling electricity of their live performances, and who trade in delicately charged alt-indie

 music laced with emotion. With that in mind, it makes much more sense for the Borders-based Frightened Rabbit to release a song attempting to sum up those intrinsic festival season sentiments than it does for your usual flash-in-the-pan novelty act.

While their song - It's Christmas So We'll Stop - isn't exactly aimed at taking the band to the top spot of the pop charts (that position seems permanently rented out to The X Factor nowadays anyway) the low-key 7" single that came out on Monday does reflect one of the real reasons behind celebrating the annual occasion on which you used to think Santa Claus was coming to town.

"It's about just accepting the things you would usually complain about; pausing for Christmas," explains singer and guitarist Scott Hutchison. "It can be as simple as just making up with people. On Christmas Day it's easier to get along. It's a nice thing, and kind of essential."

Referring to the band's home town of Selkirk, he adds: "Where most of the song comes from is the fact that on Christmas Eve everyone goes up to this one pub at about eight o'clock, and you find people that well, perhaps you hate them, but it's all good. What have you been up to?' Well, I'm in a band.' It's fine, but it's not like on Boxing Day you're going to phone them up."

The three-piece - who signed to the respected Brighton-based record label FatCat earlier this year - had been debating whether to release the song now at all or hold it back for inclusion on their impending second album The Midnight Organ Flight, which has already been completed and is due for release early next year. Eventually, they decided it marked a nice stepping stone between their new effort and their debut album Sings the Greys.

Originally put out by the band themselves, It's Christmas So We'll Stop was re-released on FatCat last month with some supplementary recording and mastering. Sings the Greys has also just been re-released, which has put the band in the slightly strange situation of working on the new material in New York with Interpol/Mercury Rev producer Peter Katis, then returning home to promote a debut that originally saw the light of day in May 2006.

Drummer Grant Hutchison, Scott's brother, admits: "It was very odd because we went out to record and get into the second-album mindset, and then we come back and all they're talking about is the first album, which is slowly creeping into people's heads."

But, as Scott explains, it was important that the songs on Sings the Greys didn't just disappear. "I always feel like those songs are the mainstay of our live set," he says, "and for them to just get lost - as might have happened that would have been a shame, if we couldn't have played those and have the audience know them."

"It would have been frustrating as well, knowing how good those songs are," adds Grant.

It's been a fast-paced couple of years for Frightened Rabbit. They've transformed from a teeny-weeny local band doing everything off their own backs into a fully fledged touring act, signed to an internationally renowned label, who just this month were on the road as main support for popular indie-rock upstarts We Are Scientists. The band started out with Scott performing solo as support for his friends, the skewed dance-punk collective Shitdisco - who have seen a similar rise in fortunes during 2007. He roped in Grant as he realised gig-goers would be in an upbeat frame of mind for the main act, and then guitarist Billy Kennedy to fill out the sound - and because "he was coming to all the gigs anyway, so we thought he may as well not have to pay."

It was the anarchic intensity of the trio's shows that soon gained them fans by word of mouth, although - as anybody who has heard their debut will attest - Frightened Rabbit are an equally intriguing recorded proposition, with subtleties and intricate layering waiting to be discovered within the mix.

The band are keen to make the most of the separate advantages offered by each medium of making music. Scott explains: "I definitely see the two things playing live and recording in the studio as completely different. It seems pointless to have these two spheres that are completely different, and not use them in separate ways."

Grant adds: "When we first went to America to record the new album, one of the first things the producer asked us was, Do you want to make this album as a three-piece?' And we said, We want to include everything. We want to make this the best album we possibly can.'"

After the successful endeavours of the past year, the band are eagerly anticipating their last show of the year tonight - not least because it will give them a chance to catch up with old acquaintances and new friends alike.

Their label has decided to throw A FatCat Christmas at the Arches in Glasgow, in celebration of the considerable Scottish contingent on their roster. Frightened Rabbit will be joined by another top tip for 2008, The Twilight Sad (the two bands actually performed together in Glasgow last Christmas at King Tut's Wah Wah Hut), as well as the acclaimed Edinburgh-based folk singer Vashti Bunyan, for what promises to be a night of some magnificence.

"We've done a lot of touring in the second half of the year," Grant says, "and a lot of our gigs haven't been in Glasgow, so that's going to be one of the biggest things - seeing a lot of our social group we won't have seen in so long."

Tonight will give them a chance to relax with friends before, in a few days' time, they meet up with those they see so rarely at their local pub and - however briefly - pause for Christmas.

It's just as well they're allowed a moment to absorb everything that's happened in their career thus far. Next year promises to be one on fast forward for Frightened Rabbit.

Observe and Report the rapid rise and fall of anti-comedy

Can you call something a comedy when it doesn't seem primarily intended to be funny?

Observe and Report is the latest effort from director and writer Jody Hill, who has previously turned his hand to the recent successful HBO series Eastbound & Down - in which protagonist Kenny “You're fucking out, I'm fucking in” Powers went about as low as you can go in the conventional comedy format - and slow-gestating cult feature The Foot Fist Way, which also starred Danny McBride, this time as a horrifically socially inept karate sensei.

Like both of those, the main character in Observe and Report is hard to empathise with, and you'd be more likely to find yourself identifying with Michael Jackson (well, pre-Black Or White anyway) than Seth Rogen's loathsome and lecherous misfit Ronnie Barnhardt.

The boundary-pushing blitz of bad taste ‘gags’ seem to escort to its logical conclusion the gutterward path of cringe comedy, which has boomed since The Office and its numerous versions found itself an ardent worldwide audience, though in the US it seems to have also melded with the earlier, more purile-minded work of the Farrelly Brothers. 

Now we're given comic archetypes whose character arcs propel them instead towards tragedy - as would most likely be the case in real life - when before the bizarre characters and scenarios would have been presented with a more optimistic hue. It's a twist playing on your expectations of the genre, which is where the humour is supposed to be found.

(Forest Gump as played by Seth Rogen would most likely have caught a venereal disease courtesy of a catastrophic misunderstanding involving a couple of prostitutes, become an unwitting drug smuggler for Pablo Escobar, before running into the path of a locomotive long before he got the chance to use any similes involving some Milk Tray.)

 

However, doesn't that level of self-knowingness mean that it's going to be too self-referential for mainstream audiences to digest, requiring a deeper understanding than most are likely to want to invest if they’re just looking for some light-hearted chuckles? 

They're unlikely to go along to a comedy to have their preconceptions challenged, and they may already have certain expectations from a Rogen vehicle that are sure to be shattered with Observe and Report. (Well, apart from the fucking cuss words.)

Given that it's been trounced in the box office by the similarly themed but decidedly more audience-friendly (and more dunder-headed) Paul Blart: Mall Cop, movies like Observe and Report are likely to be limited to smaller audiences in future, though they’ll still be a welcome addition in terms of offsetting the more nauseating studio blockbusters which merely challenge the boundaries of good taste through their sheer awfulness. 

And anyway, it’s perhaps just as well, even as a fully grown adult I still shudder at the time I tried to sit through Bad Santa with the parents last Christmas...

Critic's choice - July 17

The Butthole Surfers
Sun, 7pm, ABC, 300 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, £16, 0870 4000 818

Though they may join the likes of The Pixies and My Bloody Valentine on the list of influential indie icons making a comeback with their legendary line-ups, the Butthole Surfers still seem a band built for the underground rather than larger stages such as the ABC. But it's their anarchic streak which makes the Texas-based alt-rock sonic terrorists still so intriguing, and which should ensure your devoted attendance on the most holy of weekdays - even if most of the sludgy sounds bound to assault your ears are likely to be anything but godly.

(Appeared in The Herald on July 17, 2008)

T in the Park 2008 review

Friday
Los Campesinos provided an ideal start to the weekend, with a perky, motivational brand of indie that seemed designed to get people into the right mood. But even they were a timid beast compared to Alphabeat who followed in King Tut's Wah Wah Tent, their unashamed pop stylings gloriously received by a crowd obviously craving a bit of camp.

The Radio 1/NME stage headliners The Chemical Brothers provided the sort of euphoria probably more suited to a final night. The ascendant guitar riff of Leave Home was just part of a frankly fearsome onslaught comprised of electronic beats and neuron-shredding noises.

Saturday
The disposition of Eddy Grant was so sunny that it managed to transcend the cloudy conditions overhead. Grant's reliably reggae-tinged rendition of Baby Come Back found the lunchtime Saturday crowd in their usual resplendent form. By contrast, Gun looked a little wary as they followed on the main stage. Recently reformed, their early-90s pomp rock seemed out of place and out of time, though their spirited cover of Cameo's Word Up is always guaranteed to get things going. In contrast, The Stranglers were living proof that classic songs breed longevity. King Tut's Wah Wah Tent was so full for their set that it proved impossible to get in for their glorious rendition of Golden Brown.

Even without their toplessness Biffy Clyro would have stunned onlookers on the main stage; it was a record-breaking eighth appearance for the Ayrshire band who should have even brighter days to look forward to if the rock-sodden, fist-punching finale of set standout 57 was anything to go by.

Erol Alkan provided an upbeat soundtrack in the Slam Tent, but main stage headliners Rage Against the Machine didn't so much crush the competition as sit astride them like giant rap-rock goliaths, reminding everyone of what they have been missing these past few years. Know Your Enemy and Vietnow were incendiary enough that the onslaughts should have been preceded by a safety warning. The highlight was the brilliant chaos of Killing In The Name. Vicious though it may be, it was a perfectly cathartic way to celebrate the festival's fifteenth anniversary.

Sunday
Sunday opened to some welcome glimpses of sunshine. Sadly, though perhaps with good reason, Bowling For Soup provided a shocking, painful hangover cure for the unfortunately unwary who sidled up to the main stage early on.

The US band's luridly juvenile pop-punk at least provided a nice contrast to the more welcome spasmodic metal lurchings of Mindless Self Indulgence, who created some entertaining moments of sheer unpredictability over at the Radio 1/NME stage.

A particular highlight came when the appropriately named Jimmy Urine batted away a thrown-on plastic pint cup of dubious contents. What better way to get things going early on a Sunday afternoon at T in the Park?

A euphoric presence manifests itself to a grateful audience in the form of British Sea Power, whose anthemic No Lucifer provides a suitably seismic explosion of epic indie-rock. After that the Slam Tent takes centre stage, where Miss Kittin and The Hacker initially dazzle with a live rendition of accessible techno-pop before the mighty Justice floored onlookers with an opening gambit of Genesis and Phantom (Part One). That Pendulum were on at the same time (in the Wah Wah Tent) was a pleasure almost too much to bear.

On, then, to the Relentess Stage, for two acts destined for much bigger things in the future. Holy F*** were simply a revelation, their organic take on electronic music building to such a crescendo that it's almost insulting to see it staged in such cosy environs. And The Presets, despite some technical hiccups, were a suitably exceptional end to the festivities, My People and I Go Hard, I Go Home proving particularly joyous.

Critic's choice - July 10

Red Sparowes

Thu, 7.30pm, Stereo, 20-28 Renfield Lane, Glasgow, £7, 0141 222 2254

Not so much a gig as the chance to experience first-hand a stunning, mind-altering sonic soundscape, Red Sparowes are not the sort of proposition you should use to aid a descent into some messy midweek binge drinking. They hail from Los Angeles, but you wouldn't know it from the swirling, gloomy post-rock they manage to parade on an epic scale, almost unimaginably grand given that the band are merely a superbly dextrous four-piece rather than a hundred-strong rock orchestra.

(Appeared in The Herald on July 10, 2008)

Critic's choice - July 3

My Bloody Valentine

Thu, 7pm, Barrowland, 244 Gallowgate, Glasgow, £22.50, 0870 220 1116

With some returns popping up you might be able to see one of My Bloody Valentine's comeback shows. If so, you'll catch the band who gave birth to shoegaze and whose influence can be felt years after the release of their last album, 1991's Loveless.

Forsaking the melodies that made their recorded work so enthralling, Kevin Shields's crew left fans clutching their grateful ears at the end of shows by employing deafening noise levels. Bring the ear plugs.

(Appeared in The Herald on July 3, 2008)

Critic's choice - June 26

Hey You Get Off My Pavement
Sun, noon, King's Court, Glasgow, £18.50, 0141 552 9458

Bored of those immersive long-haul festival treks? Here's a handy solution, with Hey You Get Off My Pavement taking over King's Court in Glasgow's Merchant City to deliver a delightful selection of slightly off-kilter acts to either enthral or enchant. There's worthy local headliners in the shape of indie-tweesters Camera Obscura. Also included in the day's proceedings is the driving folk-indie scuz of Foxface, the precisely intricate pop machinations of School of Language and the twisted rhythms of Felix Kubin. It'll be like a grown-up village fete with better music and more beer, though without as many flower stands. More's the pity.

(Appeared in The Herald on June 26, 2008)