My fave record for 2008: Frightened Rabbit, Midnight Organ Fight

I listened to Frightened Rabbit's The Midnight Organ Fight pretty constantly since I bought it off emusic a few months ago.  It's stuck with me in a way that few other records have this year.  I've found myself turning to the past a lot, and either revisiting bands I loved in former times, or seeking out bands that I never listened to when they were released.  There's literally no objective criteria why this album is better than any other record released this year, but I wanted to say a few things about it.

I first heard "Keep Yourself Warm" on the Onion' A.V. Club "Best new tracks of 2008 so far" feature.  They said that the vocal hook "It takes more than fucking someone to keep yourself warm" sounds like "resignation as well as a grand statement of purpose", when they reviewed the album.  What is easily missed, is the music, which builds off a single drone keyboard line, and guitars that sound reminiscent of church bells.  Alanna pointed out to me that, when put together with the lockstep drums that come in later, the songs sounds like a DJ spinning house music in some dark club, maybe "the hole" where singer and principle songwriter Scott Hutchison will "find out more".

Personally, my favorite moment on the song comes right before the eponymous couplet that the A.V. Club staff liked so well.  Right before it all explodes in a wild cacaphony, Hutchison and his brother Grant (the drummer) sing, in close ascending harmonies, "you won't find love in a hole".  It's achingly beautiful, and lends the next line its previously remarked on sense of purpose.

The whole album is filled with moments like that:  "It'll be the only thing holding me up" on the opening track "The Modern Leper"; "When it's all gone something carries on" in "Head rolls off"; "You twist and whisper the wrong name--I don't care and nor do my ears" on "The Twist".  It's a dark record, about the longing for someone you can no longer be with, even when you've forgotten why they made you happy, and every moment with them brings some kind of pain.

And like those awful situations, there are many embarrassing and maybe even regrettable actions on the record.  I winced the first time I heard Hutchinson, in talking about his feelings of love, say that "we should kick its cunt in and watch as it dies bleeding", or when the bombastic horns kick in, as he, in all seriousness on the second song of the album, that "this is the last song I'll write about it you".  It's outrageous and melodramatic, but so are most break-ups I've ever been in or heard about.  And in a way, it drives the point home so much harder.