Frightened Rabbit are at Aldershot’s West End Centre on March 6
Frightened Rabbit hop along to the Westy
February 25, 2010
SEE a band on their way up before they get out of reach at Aldershot’s West End Centre on Saturday, March 6.
Frightened Rabbit will play there just five days after releasing their third studio album, The Winter Of Mixed Drinks, through FatCat.
Their steady ascent is set to rise incrementally with the release of the new album, appetite for which has been whetted by the anthemic Swim Until You Can’t See Land single, which gave the band their first Zane Lowe plays and made a unaminous critcal impression.
It made it onto NME’s 50 best tracks of 2009 and was chosen as Q’s Track Of The Day, News Of The World’s SotW, Record Of The Day’s Track Of The Week and CMU Daily’s Track Of The Day.
More tellingly they registered strongly in the albums of the decade polls everywhere from blogs to NME and The Skinny.
The Winter Of Mixed Drinks showcases a more fully realised sound with a broader pallette than their previous works, with direct and upbeat songs like Nothing Like You and Living In Colour jostling for position with intense and brittle epics like Skip The Youth and Yes I Would.
Lead singer Scott Hutchison explained: “We’ve broadened our horizons sonically and it feels like a natural move forward. Most importantly, it’s better than the last one.”
In order to facilitate the new material and flesh out the older tunes live, the band – once upon a time simply Hutchison alone – have recently expanded to a five-piece with the addition of new member Gordon Skene (formerly of Make Model).
“We want to do the recordings justice when we play them live,” explained Hutchison. “Gordon will be playing a bundle of instruments – we just bought a tasty wee mandolin for him to fiddle!”
The band had a climatic sell-out show at the Scala in April 2009 and toured the UK in November and December as support to Gomez and Modest Mouse (and the USA in September with labelmates The Twilight Sad and We Were Promised Jetpacks).
They saw out 2009 playing to an 80,000-strong crowd at Edinburgh’s Hogmanay celebration and 2010 will be a pivotal year for the band.
Hutchison said: “I’ve never been in a position of being aware of an audience of any size that was waiting for our music until now. You have to be aware of it or else it’s totally selfish.
“Pressure sounds like a negative thing but it’s quite positive actually. It feels earned. Everything we have achieved has been earned.
"It would be disappointing if we didn’t become more popular because that’s got to be the goal for every new record. If it comes I think we are actually ready for it now.”
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