Frightened Rabbit layers it on
"The Loneliness and the Scream" from Frightened Rabbit's The Winter of Mixed Drinks builds on little more than a rapid single-chord electric guitar strum, but when that chord shifts to a second one and when it gets colored by more guitars and Scott Hutchison's impassioned singing, something exciting happens. That strum - nearly a drone - becomes the through-line behind an existential crisis, as Hutchison sings, "Oh the loneliness, and the scream to prove to everyone that I exist," and the rest of the band (recently expanded to quintet size) joins the drone or create melodies around it.
"The Loneliness and the Scream" from Frightened Rabbit's The Winter of Mixed Drinks builds on little more than a rapid single-chord electric guitar strum, but when that chord shifts to a second one and when it gets colored by more guitars and Scott Hutchison's impassioned singing, something exciting happens. That strum - nearly a drone - becomes the through-line behind an existential crisis, as Hutchison sings, "Oh the loneliness, and the scream to prove to everyone that I exist," and the rest of the band (recently expanded to quintet size) joins the drone or create melodies around it.
By the time "The Loneliness" reached its apex with football-chant whoa-oh, oh-ohs in the unreasonably sweaty basement of the First Unitarian Church on Friday night, the sold-out crowd joined in enthusiastic support, in a communal battle cry against isolation. Or maybe it was just the thrill of participating in a smartly crafted anthem, of the way layers of sound can pull a listener towards a visceral catharsis.
Glasgow's Frightened Rabbit work on a grand scale: Hutchison sings in an urgent warble, and he's desperate in every song, whether pleading "I need human heat" in the chorale ballad "The Twist" or waxing nostalgic in the Celtic folk stomp "Old Old Fashioned." The evening's prettiest song, "Swim Until You Can't See Land," ennobled a despair that leads to a suicide.
Detractors hear emo-excess, but the rabid Frabbit fans - this one among them - got swept into the impassioned crescendos: the pulsing two-note patterns punctuated by isolated power chords in "Skip the Youth," the wall-of-sound rush of "Nothing Like You," the comradely sway of "Good Arms vs. Bad Arms."
In building songs from repetitive strums, Frightened Rabbit made simplicity a virtue; openers Maps & Atlases made virtuosity sound accessible. With swift and complex patterns of interlocked finger-tapped guitars and asymmetrical rhythms, the Chicago quartet displayed a startling level of technique and proficiency.
But songs such as "Israeli Caves" from the forthcoming Perch Patchwork had hooks and choruses that made them nearly as accessible as they were impressive, the result a unique distillation of disparate elements, notably the catchy indie-rock of Vampire Weekend or Fleet Foxes and the intellectual post-rock of Tortoise, Dirty Projectors or TV on the Radio. Definitely a new band to watch.