Frightened Rabbit

I called The Winter of Mixed Drinks Frightened Rabbit’s “best so far” in my Dusted review…and I’m really, really liking the heft of it, the chemical reaction between lushness and sparsity, the late-album upward turn the converts this from a suicide note to a paeon to love.

Here’s that opening paragraph:

No one who’s listened closely to “Sing the Greys,” off Frightened Rabbit’s 2007 debut, would question whether Scott Hutchison has a close acquaintance with depression, nor that his brother Grant’s frantic, kit-battering drumming is fueled by anger. It’s always been easy to overlook Frightened Rabbit’s dark side, focusing instead on the ragged buoyancy of their melodies, the fractious energy of their scrubby guitars. Still, it’s there. It’s always been there. So, while in some ways The Winter of Mixed Drinks is the band’s darkest, most soul-searching album yet, it’s not unprecedented. What’s new is the sense of cathartic overcoming in this third full-length. The front half of Mixed Drinks is littered with images of drowning, grave-digging and really excessive consumption of alcohol, but by its penultimate song, the triumphant “Living in Color,” you get the sense that the Hutchison brothers have turned the corner.

There’s more if you like

“Nothing Like You” (they’re pushing the simplest, least interesting song on the album…as usual)