Scottish Fiction

It's been three years since Frightened Rabbit have played Down Under, their last trip our way tying in with a performance at the 2010 Splendour In The Grass festival while touring third album The Winter Of Mixed Drinks. According to Grant Hutchison, this hasn't been due to a lack of interest, though – far from it. The band have been itching to return to our shores; it's just that the invitations have been few and far between, with Groovin' The Moo finally sending some love to Glasgow to get the quintet back out here.

“We sort of disappeared after that [tour].” Hutchison admits. “Well, not straight after that, but not long after, to start doing the new record. It took us a while to get [Pedestrian Verse] written and ready for release, so it's difficult to know if any people are still interested and still listening to the band when you have an extended break like that. And in Australia, it's not that easy to just 'nip over' for a [few] days; it's something that costs a lot and takes a lot of planning and you need to make sure people are going to come to the shows. It was frustrating for the offers not to come in [from promoters] but we understood it.

“[But] to come over to Australia [now] and visit places that are off the beaten track – it's great. When you go [overseas] generally you've just got shows, you don't often have a lot of time off. And with such a vast country it's not so easy to go, 'I've got a day off tomorrow, I'll go here'. It will take you hours to get there, so it's really nice [to visit some smaller towns]. Most of us are from the country – we live in the city now – but we grew up outside of [urban areas] so we're all looking forward to it.”

The band are currently on tour in America, a territory they have enjoyed continued support in ever since Pitchfork and college radio got behind Frightened Rabbit's 2006 debut, Sing The Greys. The band, then a three-piece, had moved on considerably from a mere moniker for the solo work of frontman (and brother of Grant) Scott Hutchison; however, they've still made large leaps and bounds to be the fully functional five-piece that we have today.

Tonight they've had to cancel a show in Louisville, Kentucky due to Scott falling ill, but although disappointed his brother can't say enough good things about the current state of the band and the music they are creating together. Pedestrian Verse has been lauded by critics and fans across the globe, the group assured with their playing, the songs stirring in their themes and compositions.

“We all definitely felt confident that this was our strongest album,” Hutchison admits. “It was a different writing process; we got all involved this time around, but you never know how albums are going to be received and whether people are going to appreciate the changes you've made or maybe the changes you haven't made. But we felt really good about it as soon as it was done.

“I think one of the main things before going into the studio to actually record it was... we were consciously trying to avoid the mistakes we felt we made on the last record, which were really... we just threw everything at the last record,” he concedes. “We just layered it up in an effort to create a big sound, and it's quite a naive way to create that, to physically make it large by adding more parts. That was something we definitely tried to avoid, and that was something that Leo [Abrahams] the producer was aware of and something that he was quite strict about.”

Hutchison credits Abrahams, who is also an accomplished solo artist and session musician, for being a calming presence in the studio, remaining positive and upbeat during their time together in rural Wales. “He was very good working with us as people and musicians,” says the drummer. And by allowing the record to breathe, for the subtleties to be left bare, the producer has made sure Pedestrian Verse is the honest sonic representation that Frightened Rabbit's warm, gruff indie deserves.

“It was difficult to know when to stop, but that was something that Leo was really good at [deciding],” recalls Hutchison. “When he said 'stop', we stopped. He'd get up before us, before we got into the studio, and he'd ask us not to come in for a couple of hours, and I'm sure when he was doing that he was making changes, and one of the key things, one of the most appropriate things he said in relation to this record; he used to work with Brian Eno, and one of his techniques was to always make sure the band think they're making the decisions.” He lets out a slight chuckle at the thought. “I'm positive he did that with us. There was things happening on the record that we almost knew nothing about. We'd just come in the next day and go, 'Oh, that track's sounding good isn't it?'.”

When you look at the ingredients behind the record: the producer, the major label (Pedestrian Verse is Frightened Rabbit's first release on Atlantic) and the focus on equal songwriting input from each member, it's no surprise that the album has been the band's most successful to date. Although, such points failed to reduce the shock and resulting sense of pride that a top ten UK album brought five scruffy blokes from Selkirk.

“The label had sort of said, 'Right, we'd be over the moon with top 20'. Then obviously you get the counts midweek and counts a couple of days before and we were sitting at seven, but then you've got the Saturday before the actual charts come out where everyone goes out and buys Rihanna. We actually got leapfrogged by Andrea Bocelli,” he wryly laughs, “because it was Valentine's week. But it was great, we didn't expect it at all and it's something that I can say for the rest of my life, that we had a top ten record, so that's brilliant.”

And now, a decade into the life of Frightened Rabbit, it seems things are only just beginning.

”We've slowly built it over the years and it's happened quite organically and naturally, y'know,” Hutchison says regarding the band's growth. “It's as important that the personalities match, if not more important that the personalities match than musically, and the people that have joined the band since Scott started solo have been carefully chosen. It was just great this time around to get the chance to work as a group from the very beginning and for us to all feel that as a band the record is all five of us and we can all be proud of the top ten position rather than feel like we're Scott's backing band,” he jokes. “But it's really great.”

Frightened Rabbit will be playing the following dates:

Saturday 27 April – Maitland Showground, NSW
Sunday 28 April – University of Canberra, ACT
Tuesday 30 April – The Hi-Fi, Sydney NSW
Thursday 2 May – The Zoo, Brisbane QLD
Saturday 4 May – Prince of Wales Showground, Bendigo, VIC
Sunday 5 May – Murray Sports Complex, Townsville Cricket Grounds, QLD
Tuesday 7 May – Corner Hotel, Melbourne VIC
Wednesday 8 May – Corner Hotel, Melbourne VIC
Thursday 9 May – Oxford Art Factory, Sydney NSW
Saturday 11 May – Hay Park, Bunbury WA