Image of Frightened Rabbit (yes, that's actually them!) from Self-Starter Foundation
#2 Midnight Organ Fight by Frightened Rabbit (Fat Cat Records)
"If you record an album with just ten songs, three instrumentals is too many."
This is what I thought to myself as I listened to Frightened Rabbit's debut album Sing the Greys back in 2006. The record had gotten some good online reviews, and I liked a couple of the songs I'd heard, but the album didn't really deliver on the potential I was hearing. I particularly liked the band's knack for using pop dynamics, starting their songs with a modest arrangement and then adding sounds gradually and dropping them all away for a second before piling back on again. I made a mental note to check out the Glasgow band again when they came out with another album.
I picked up Midnight Organ Fight the day it came out and found that Frightened Rabbit had built on their strengths and learned some new tricks as well. Lyrically, Midnight Organ Fight is in a different league from Sing the Greys - while they are both break-up albums, the new record is operating on a different level entirely. The titular organs (no pun intended) are not the musical kind, and they point to the synecdoche of the album's central theme. It's all about reducing relationships and sex to the organs, bodily functions, and chemistry involved. It's not as sordid as it sounds, though - well, actually it is. It is pretty raunchy in parts, and our Scottish friends don't pull any punches with the dirty talk. But it's also a lot more sophisticated than it sounds.
"The Modern Leper" compares the famously extra-bad skin condition to feelings of unworthiness in a relationship. "Fast Blood" is about how blood rushes to certain body parts at certain times. "Head Rolls Off" addresses the question of brain death and heart death in the larger scheme of things. "Good Arms vs. Bad Arms" is about... I don't really know, but hey, it's all about body parts. Other songs on the album are about pleasant activities like being poked in the eye and having hormone races. Midnight Organ Fight's slavish devotion to its conceit is admirable on one level, but the lyrics are also evocative on an emotional level. Reducing relationships to human biology is just really sad, adding a layer of pathos to the typical breakup album sentiment, making this record something special.
Take "The Twist", for instance. It's about dancing. Simple enough, right? But the lyric refers to wrists, shins, hips, hair, and ears. And the chorus revolves around the line, "I need human heat" - a particularly sad way of expressing the need to have a connection with another person. The song is also a good example of the dramatic build that Frightened Rabbit puts into the songs on the record. It starts with a keyboard bounce and Scott Hutchinson's croaking voice, and then choral backing vocals start to weave into the melody. Gradually, a tambourine, drums, and guitar enter the mix. And then, at the end of the second verse, when you think you're hearing what the song has to offer, the drums come to life and a chanting backing vocal singing "extrasuperveryextrasupervery" takes the song to another level. Frightened Rabbit is going back into the studio in early 2009 - if they can take another huge step forward with their new material, their next album will be amazing.
"The Twist" by Frightened Rabbit
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