Though Opening for Death Cab, Scrappy Scottish Rockers May Steal the Show
By Andrew Clayman
Published in The Nashville Scene, August 2011
“I actually like being the underdog,” says Scott Hutchinson, who formed Frightened Rabbit as a solo project in 2003 and has since watched it grow to a five-piece. “A lot of things about being an opening act kind of appeal to a Scottish sensibility, you know? We’re a small band from a small country, but we still have this opportunity to just make a blast of the 40 minutes we’re given, and I love doing that. Taking on that sort of challenge in front of a new crowd is quite gratifying.”
Of course, opening for a big-name band is also an ancient rock n’ roll rite of passage. Back in 2004, Death Cab themselves (at a creative peak) opened for Pearl Jam on the “Vote for Change” tour—a string of arena shows that did a lot more for Ben Gibbard than they did for John Kerry. Within months, the Pacific Northwest’s most huggable indie band had inked a deal with Atlantic Records, igniting their widespread takeover of America’s dorm rooms.
On the surface, it would appear that Frightened Rabbit has set about following that same blueprint. After three acclaimed albums on the independent Fat Cat label, Hutchinson and his mates signed to Atlantic last December and have spent the majority of 2011 working on the band’s major label debut. This North American tour with Death Cab, then, is a coming out party of sorts—graduating from the cozy confines of the Exit/In to the bright lights of the Bridgestone Arena.
“Oh, it’s a massive deal for us,” says Hutchinson. “You know, the first tour we did with Death Cab [in 2008] was in Europe and the UK, and their notoriety is just a bit less over there, so it was a smaller scale. In the U.S., it’s obviously a completely different ballgame. I spent half an hour Googling all the venues we’re playing on this tour, and it was just like, ‘holy shit!’ These places are amazing!”
For Hutchinson—like a lot of people—the arenafication of the traditionally intimate and inconspicuous Death Cab For Cutie is still a bit hard to get his head around, even as it’s opening doors for Frightened Rabbit’s similar brand of heart-on-the-sleeve indie rock.
“I honestly don’t know how they’ve done it,” Hutchinson says. “But, you know, Death Cab has never really been a band that’s been forced down anyone’s throats. One of the reasons why I admire and love them is that they have taken this slow, gradual build-up over the years—almost sneaking up on people—to the point where you’re like, ‘what, Death Cab is playing arenas?!’ And I think that’s a great way of doing it. … Plus, they were on The OC, right? [laughs]”
Chuckles aside, Frightened Rabbit is probably one Gossip Girl cameo away from a mainstream breakout of their own. And while Death Cab is slowly losing some of the warmth and sensitivity of their earlier work, Hutchinson and his bandmates are hitting their stride—tackling heartbreak and frustration with much greater urgency and determination than the wistful Gibbard and Co. ever did.
2008’s ex-girlfriend exorcism The Midnight Organ Fight was a powder keg of an LP; full of unbridled energy, hooks galore, and clever, confessional wordplay— somewhere between Ted Leo and Arab Strap on the blood-pumping scale. Its follow-up, The Winter of Mixed Drinks (2010), found Hutchinson astutely switching gears into more positive, less personal territory, with a Technicolor grandness more in the vein of The National or Arcade Fire. By no coincidence, Frightened Rabbit’s reputation as a leading indie act was solidified, easing the pressure a bit for their next effort.
“Yeah, now the doors are completely open for us in a lot of ways,” says Hutchinson, noting that the new album is taking shape in a much more collaborative manner than its predecessors, which he wrote and arranged mostly in solitude.
“I think in every writer’s life you reach that point where you feel like you might be starting to recycle ideas a bit, so it feels really new and good this time around to be working together with everybody on the process every day. And naturally, it’s sounding unlike anything we’ve done before, too, which I’m quite pleased about.”
Frightened Rabbit won’t have the new record in the can for a while yet, but to win over the Death Cab faithful, Hutchinson knows it’s the energy of their live show—more than any recording—that sets his band apart.
“Every show, we owe it to people to give everything we have. Even in a big venue, we’re going to reach for the back of the room—which means as much if not more energy than a small club show. It’s what the people paid for, and we never take that lightly.”
No comments:
Post a Comment