FRIGHTENED RABBITThe Winter of Mixed Drinks
(Fat Cat)
**** (out of 5)
The songs on Frightened Rabbit’s new album The Winter of Mixed Drinks are almost naked in their desire to make your heart soar — the melodies are anthemic, building again and again to massive Arcade Fire crescendos, bearing upbeat, inspirational titles like “Swim Until You Can’t See Land,” “Not Miserable,” “Yes, I Would,” and “Living in Colour.” It would all be embarrassing — too big, too desperate — if it weren’t for the fact that, with singer and songwriter Scott Hutchison’s fierce, fuzzy voice front and centre, these songs really do soar, they really do hit those dauntingly high emotional peaks, they really do sweep you up in their images of swimming so far that you nearly drown and digging your own grave but not lying down in it to die. It helps that there’s an undercurrent of melancholy to even Hutchison’s most exultant moments, a note of harsh, winter-wind doubt that’s indistinguishable from his Scottish burr.
It’s the kind of album that appeals to the most teenaged part of your soul, the part that still sees your daily routine in terms of a vast struggle between joy and despair. In that sense, The Winter of Mixed Drinks is the kind of album you almost want to deny liking too much when you talk about it in public, for fear other people will figure out just how sad the smallest setbacks can make you feel. Hell, I’m fighting that urge even now.
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