83

83. Pedestrian Verse - Frightened Rabbit (2013)

Alternative

Listening to Frightened Rabbit has never been easy, but it became far more difficult in May of 2018 after the body of founder and bandleader Scott Hutchison was found washed up on the shores of the Firth of Forth in his native Scotland. His music has always been rife with disturbingly specific accounts of mental illness, obviously written from the perspective of someone with an intimate understanding of the symptoms. To listen to them now is especially sad, as many of the songs play as clear warning signs that were never acknowledged.

Pedestrian Verse, despite its self-deprecating title, is a brilliant exercise in songwriting. “The Woodpile” is a gorgeous, lofty anthem that begs to be sung along with. But even this ultra-accessible single is a weighty plea for respite from crippling loneliness, the metaphor of being trapped in a collapsing building being an acute description of panic and anxiety. This formula is explored further throughout the album. Chronically catchy melodies are juxtaposed with heavy, and at times overtly troubling lyrics, as if the music itself is a defense mechanism beneath which some degree of catharsis can be achieved through the lyrical bloodletting.

“Late March Death March” details the guilt of waking up after a night of excess with Hutchison cursing himself in church and assuming the role of punching bag for his self-destructive tendencies to wear themselves out on. “State Hospital” paints a striking portrait of a woman whose life has been hell from the beginning, never able to find connection or peace, she’s “a slipped disc in the spine of community”. That’s gifted writing, born from a place of recognition of what an existence like that feels like. “Only an idiot would swim through the shit I write”, Hutchison laments on “Oil Slick”, his reference to the seemingly endless flood of darkness that he somehow manages to dam and fashion into beautiful music. Let’s hope he found some peace.

*image; cover art for the album Pedestrian Verse by the artist Frightened Rabbit