(Fatcat Records/Inertia)

Your new favourite band

When Mumford & Sons’ honest and heartfelt debut album Sigh No More struck a raw chord with legions of adoring indie fans last year, they unknowingly paved the way for Scottish band Frightened Rabbit. The Selkirk quintet’s beautifully powerful third album, The Winter Of Mixed Drinks, while aesthetically worlds apart from Mumford, shares the same blushing sense of sincerity that the latter made commercially successful. The idea of cathartic release is not something new to Frightened Rabbit either. Their brutally emotive second album, The Midnight Organ Flight, arrived in 2008 to much critical acclaim. A break-up album, The Midnight Organ Flight saw singer and lyricist Scott Hutchinson passionately venting his frustrations amidst a cacophonous din of distorted guitar and throbbing rhythms. The Winter Of Mixed Drinks is its follow-up and this time finds Hutchinson exploring themes of solitude and introversion between all manner of new sonic nuance. Songs like The Loneliness And The Scream along with opener Things are built around propulsive percussive work while heavily layered guitar accentuates Hutchinson’s yelping vocal style. The album’s lead single Swim Until You Can’t See The Land sways to a gliding string section provided by Fatcat label mates Hauschka before Northing Like You hurtles forth with such startling optimism, its chirpy guitar lines and driving bass belies the song’s dark subtexts as Hutchinson sings: “She was not the cure for cancer / And all my questions still ask for answers ... Up awake and I’m post operation / I find I’ve come in a dream again / All the pain almost as painful as ever but / Something in me was not the same.” Others like Not Miserable and Living In Colour are given added warmth through simplistic piano parts and charming string arrangements bestowing the band with an intense, rich new texture. For all those who discover Frightened Rabbit through The Winter Of Mixed Drinks, this inspirational and infectious album will become a most treasured possession.

****½

JACK LANGRIDGE

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