Whilst sitting waiting to interview Frightened Rabbit lead singer, we were briefed on what not to ask: “Don’t ask about being in a band with your brother, they always get asked that. Don’t ask about all the Scottish bands knowing one another, and cut the novelty questions,” the tour guy says in a gruff, intimidating Scottish accent. We silently struck three questions on our list feeling somewhat uneasy.
The brutal interview preparation wasn’t necessarily unfair. The band were coming to the end of a mammoth tour with their third record, the critically acclaimed Winter of Mixed Drinks an album filled to the brim with catchy, powerful uncompromising indie rock. They deserved respect.
Within 10 seconds however, our fears of interview hell were immediately extinguished. Lead singer Scott Hutchinson was laidback, forthcoming and effortlessly charismatic.
One of the most underrated bands around at the moment, Frightened Rabbit’s earlier material also deserves a mention as their previous albums Midnight Organ Fight and Sing the Greys were almost flawless pieces of emotional rock. The boys from Glasgow have been together since 2003 and have been working their way slowly up the music industry’s food chain trying to reach a position of which their music is worthy. The first time we saw them play live was in the intimacy of Duchess in York and at that gig they had confessedthat the last time they had played in York was in the basement at City Screen. Now Hutchinson is preparing to take to the stage at the Cockpit in Leeds, a much larger venue and one where many bands have gone onto great success and we hope that the band follow in a similar direction.
When asked about the band’s latest album he elaborated somewhat philosophically: “The whole thing was written after we’d finished a bit of a monster tour, it was a really hard working year for us after that record. So I was writing a lot about feeling a bit lost, like I wasn’t sure what the point of it was anymore. You know where you get to the point where you do something so much and you forget why you started doing it in the first place? So I think I was writing about that, and loneliness, isolation, trying to regain sanity as well. So the record’s all about that. What it’s like to be a human adrift.”
On the subject of touring, we pressed him on highlights of their most recent tour which had taken them to play everywhere from York’s aforementioned darkened indie basement, Duchess, to Coachella festival.
Hutchinson mentions New York, their American tour and Vienna, but it was their imminent homecoming gig in Glasgow which really got the nostalgia flowing; “that’s the venue where I saw most of the concerts growing up. When I was a teenager I saw Green Day and the Foo Fighters in this same venue so it’s sort of one of those pinnacle points. If the whole thing collapses after this weekend, it’ll be fine by me!” He finishes with a self-depreciating charm.
From tour experiences we moved to ideal festivals expecting mention of mud-soaked Glastonbury, beer-soaked Reading and Leeds or mediocre-soaked V Festival but instead he immediately flagged up End of the Road. “My ideal festival doesn’t have any sponsorship, doesn’t have any corporate logos anywhere. It’s run by people and it’s about music and fans and stuff so that’s one of my favourite festivals.”
Finally we come to the most important question of all – what does 2011 hold for Frightened Rabbit? “There’s a break happening. We’ve been working really hard and it’s time, first of all to stop touring for a little bit, and to get focused on writing the next album. So we’re going to start in earnest in January and really concentrate on the new record.” So all we can do is sit and hope that it won’t be long before those rampant Rabbits are back with new material.