Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight

Emotion is easy. Understanding it, that’s the hard part. In taking two contemplative steps back from the end of a relationship – that of frontman Scott Hutchison – Frightened Rabbit have produced a record of startling passion and honesty. With 14 tracks, give or take a couple, vividly and thoughtfully documenting the disintegration, The Midnight Organ Fight emerges as the best album of its kind since Spiritualized’s Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space.

Like J. Spaceman’s modern masterpiece of twelve years ago, the Scottish three-piece (now by necessity four) have borne beauty out of despair. What’s captured is brutal, candid, so real it’s almost tangible, but told and played with underlying optimism. It’s this balance between the tough themes and their darkly melodic backdrop that is at first striking. Recorded under the guidance of Peter Katis (The National, Interpol) six months before last November’s extended release of debut Sings The Greys, Midnight… is the sound of a band fully realising its strength. Maintaining their fundamental rawness – one of obscured pop structure - Frightened Rabbit add a mass of power and poise.

And there will be no more powerful second side to a record all year than here. The run from the utterly inspiring ‘Heads Roll Off’ to the, well, utterly inspiring ‘Floating In The Forth’ (more on that later) is unnervingly strong. Billy Kennedy’s keys and guitar rasp while Grant Hutchison’s Devendorf-esque drums (Katis drum school 101?) explode into life. Both particularly so on ‘Keep Yourself Warm’. Yet it’s difficult to be drawn away from the elder Hutchison’s songcraft. It’s too special.

Not a word is wasted over 48 on-the-button minutes. In fact most are richly layered with imagery that’s both direct and visceral, much of it concerning the human body and disease. The lines are purposeful – “It takes more than fucking someone to keep yourself warm” (from the blunt one-night-stand summating ‘Keep Yourself Warm’) - but are nonetheless contemplative. It would be easy too, to get stuck in despairing detail but every angle is covered from moments of perfection (‘Old Old Fashioned’) to the impossibility of letting go (‘My Backwards Walk’) and the resentment of moving on (‘Good Arms vs. Bad Arms’). It’s a masterclass.

Then there’s ‘Floating In The Forth’. Every great album needs a great closer and – discounting the one-minute finale ramble of ‘Who’d You Kill’ – these sweeping four minutes provide exactly that. Magnificently arranged, the chorus change from “I think I’ll save suicide for another day” to “…another year” is a moment of subtle brilliance, reaching the rescuing hope from anguish exit-right heights previously scaled alone by Eels’ ‘P.S. You Rock My World.’ And like all before, it’s staggering.