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...