hearsay

When I heard that one of my new favorite bands, Frightened Rabbit, was to play 7 shows on the east coast, 5 of which in my hometown of New York, I was beyond simply being jealous of my friends back east, I became depressed. Sure, I was pretty excited for Frightened Rabbit; it seemed like a great way to break them out of Scotland and the UK… but more than anything else, it made me wonder what I’m doing in L.A., anyway. In fairness, a few shows are not really enough to merit a questioning of my current location, but it fits into a bigger picture of bands I like being more accessible in New York. And while Frightened Rabbit tours some of the better small New York venues, I’m sitting in a world where unfortunately my car isn’t cool enough, my job title is not “producer,” and I can’t look out the window to figure out whether I need to put on a coat or not to go out. But you know what? The tacos are fucking awesome.

In reality, not being “home” to watch Frightened Rabbit worked out pretty well for me. I recommended the shows to friends and managed to get my spies out to 3 of the 5 nyc shows. Zoviet was good enough to pick up Sings the Greys for me, I got the lowdown on more shows than I would have had I actually gone to see them, and I even got to hear the new songs that they were giving away on a 3-track CDR.

Wednesday at Northsix, to an unfortunately small crowd, “they played a really good show.” Friday at Cake Shop, without much of a following, bad acoustics and technical problems, “they were awesome. thank you soo much!” Monday at Mercury Lounge, in front of a much bigger crowd, “they were nervous, but the songs still sounded good.” They mostly played as openers, so all my friends who went got home early and enjoyed good nights’ sleep. Their mothers should be so thankful. And they won everyone over. They were described as unusually large boys, with hints of beer guts, endearing in their casual approach to their songs and disregard for ’scene’ protocol. It sounds like their sets were relatively short, them probably not having that much to play anyway. I didn’t hear exactly what they played at Northsix, but Wednesday they played Sings the Greys minus “Square 9.” They pulled it out on Monday, along with my favorite, “Modern Leper,” but I’m told it didn’t come off as well as it might have. I also don’t know when exactly they worked these new songs “The Twist” and “My Backwards Walk” in, but I just about choked on my taco when I realized that they had given recordings of the new songs out and that I would be getting them within a matter of minutes by email.

As good as their music is, what really sets Frightened Rabbit apart for me are their lyrics. I think they have a huge potential, and even though I didn’t get to see them play, I have to extend a big thank you to Chris Newmyer from The Self-Started Foundation for convincing/arranging for these shows. I suppose I’ll have to go to Glasgow myself to get them all the way out here.

And I suppose this is the so-called “frightened rabbit.”

: Frightened Rabbit - My Backwards Walk :
: Frightened Rabbit - The Twist :