Track X Track Frightened Rabbit's The Winter Of Mixed Drinks

Frightened Rabbit's Midnight Organ Fight was our third favourite album of 2008 and among the 100 we considered to have defined the past decade. Frontman Scott Hutchinson kindly provided us with a track-by-track guide for the record too and he's done so again for its follow-up, the eagerly anticipated The Winter Of Mixed Drinks, released last week. Enjoy.

1. Things
When the mind starts to become messy and cluttered, one of the first courses of action is to chuck all your shit out and start again. I’ve always gathered bits and pieces of paper and random items, and sometimes you sit and look at the stuff and ask: what’s the point of it? In the end, there’s not much you actually need. When you’re dead, your stuff gets put in boxes and bags and most of it’s probably thrown in a large bin. It’s only the bits you can’t put in plastic bags that remain, and those are the things that matter.

2. Swim Until You Can't See Land
It’s important to test yourself every so often, just to see what you’re made of, and it needn’t be a grand leap into the wilderness. Maybe you just try sweetcorn for the first time. That’s a start. Maybe you walk over the brow of that hill, just to see what’s there. There’s probably a Greggs.

3. The Loneliness and the Scream
I’m probably least likely to feel lonely when I’m by myself. I quite enjoy my own company and I tell the occasional decent joke… Ha. But there’s nothing quite like the loneliness you feel in a roomful of people when you don’t want to be there. You want to just fuck off, but you can’t. You want everyone else to just fuck off, but they won’t. You want to scream ‘CHOPPED UP TITS AND COCKS’, but you can’t, and that’s a shame.

4. The Wrestle
The night barrels on, and you don’t know what on earth is happening around you anymore. So you take your clothes off and wait for the morning to come so you can put them back on and go home. When you pull your jeans up, you notice your legs are bruised, so you vow not to take them off again ‘til the bruises are gone. Look! Songs Of Praise is on the telly. I always wondered what happened to Diane-Louise Jordan.

5. Skip The Youth
Being young is so tiring. There’s all this stuff to do and you have no excuse not to do it. The only reason I would ever get a pet is to use it to as an excuse not to go out of the house. Perhaps I could just go one step further and make up a pet. That would be a great excuse to never have anyone over to the house. 

6. Nothing Like You
Old habits die hard. Other things which die hard include: ants, Aga stoves, Volvos, Bruce Willis and people who are already dead.

7. Man/Bag Of Sand
There’s an amazing butcher’s shop in Crail. JB Penman’s sells the best bacon I’ve ever eaten and I definitely had some of it on the go when I was recording this number. The rind just melts in the mouth and to be honest, sticking it in between two bits of bread doesn’t do it justice. I always have a rasher of Penman’s bacon sandwiched between two bits of Penman’s bacon. Un-fucking-believable.

8. Footsoldiar
I’ve been a right prick to quite a few people. I’m not stating that with any sense of pride or even a wry smile. It’s not very nice. Sometimes, though, you can’t help it. Being rather lazy and somewhat shy of sober confrontations/personal apologies, I’d like this song to serve as a 4 minute ‘Sorry’ to any one I have either wittingly or unwittingly offended. So, are we cool? Cool.

9. Not Miserable
I can’t listen to this one anymore. It seemed to take aaages to do in the studio. I’ve never had a headache that felt like an embryo was growing at the core of my brain. The road to completing this number was peppered with intense bursts of such mind-pain. Don’t expect to hear it live. Ever.

10. Living In Colour
The best thing about the 1950s was the invention of colour. Shame its been abused ever since by the likes of The Monkees, children’s toy manufacturers and Florence Welch. There’s so much colour out there in the world that my eyes often can’t cope, so they have a screaming breakdown and eventually mix them all together to make brown. The only respite comes in the form of the muted and charming palette used in Hollyoaks. 18:30–19:30 weeknights, I love you.

11. Yes I Would
First ever Frightened Rabbit song with saxophone on it, and I hope not the last. It’s actually got two on it. A medium sized one and a tiny one. There was a conscious effort to eschew the song structure we have employed so often on the last two records – the build and build and build – and that method extends to the album as a whole. I like that the record kind of waves you goodbye with this song, rather than kicking you in the teeth and walking away. write something here