Music
09 Dec 10

They're So Bunny

Slow-burn success has been order of the day for Scotland’s Frightened Rabbit. With this year’s The Winter Of Mixed Drinks, they’ve finally caught fire.

Brothers in bands can either result in rock ‘n’ roll magic or disharmony and punch-ups. Often, it means both. Think Kinks and Oasis – the old sibling rivalry cliché is a surefire way to spice things up. Luckily for Frightened Rabbit (as their name probably suggests), relations between the Hutchison brothers never get too volatile.

With Scott being the sensitive frontman and his brother Grant pounding away at the skins, it might prove a bit of a mismatch. That’s certainly the way Grant sees it. No punch-ups, then?
“No!” laughs Grant. “We’ve never had that. Whenever either of us is having a bad time we tend to take all the shit out on each other. But really, we’re all in it together. Anyway, when your brother’s the drummer...” Big arms. Noted.
Though Frightened Rabbit began as a Scott Hutchison solo project and their first album Sing The Greys only featured the two brothers, they haven’t been shy about adding members. New addition Gordon Skene makes it a five-piece. Will they resemble the Polyphonic Spree by album six?
“We’ve always said anyone can join Frightened Rabbit!” laughs Grant. “But I think we need to put a cap on it now – it feels good at the moment. Obviously when we come to write the new record, who knows? We might need to bring in a choir... but it’s doubtful.”
The additions to the line-up came with the increasing ambition of the band. The Winter Of Mixed Drinks is their most textured, polished album to date, the sound they’ve always strived for. Though many indie fans fall in love with a band’s lo-fi beginnings, they often forget that said band may only sound that way through necessity.
“Exactly, that’s the way it is,” says Grant. “Sing The Greys was originally meant to be a set of demos. We ended up, through necessity, making it ourselves because there was no one else to release it. Then [second album] The Midnight Organ Fight sounded the way it did because that was what we could do with the time we had, although I think it works very well with the rawness of the lyrics. There were a lot of elements that didn’t make it. This time around we had more time to experiment and add those things on. We threw absolutely everything at it – probably too much!”
The fuller sound dovetails with a new found optimism. If Organ Fight was the bleak break-up album, Mixed Drinks is an altogether more healing affair. So has Grant noticed the rainclouds disappear from above his brother’s head?
“Yeah, definitely! Anyone who listens can tell that. With Organ Fight, Scott wasn’t in a very good place, it was a miserable time in his life. We’ve still held onto an element of cynicism, but everything in Scott’s life is going reasonably well!”
The future looks bright. This year has seen Frightened Rabbit embark on well-received tours of Europe and the US and they seem on course for an old-fashioned climb to success. They are also one of those bands that other bands seem to love, receiving glowing endorsements from the likes of Death Cab For Cutie, Modest Mouse and Belle & Sebastian.
“I think the music we write and play is very honest. We’re not trying to be anything other than what we are,” reasons Grant. “The bands that have picked up on us and asked us to tour with them are very similar to us in that respect. They’ve worked at it from the very beginning. They’ve all had their breaks but it seems like they came quite late in their careers. It’s a really great opportunity to tour with bands like that to see where they’ve got to, through hard work and perseverance.”