State Hospital– Frightened Rabbit
It still seems like Frightened Rabbit is trying to find their feet a little bit. After the mind-melting beauty of The Midnight Organ Fight, anything was going to pale a bit in comparison. 2010’s Winter of Mixed Drinks went big, but couldn’t quite deliver the pathos to make it feel significant.
Since then, they’ve released a couple short EPs that play around with form a bit more. They struck gold with “Fuck This Place” last year, but combined it with a couple dreary songs that barely got into second gear. That’s much what happens on their recently released State Hospital EP. Two wonderful songs are patched together with three insubstantial ones.
The title song “State Hospital” is by far the best track here. It’s also the most fully realized vision of what the next great album from this band is going to sound like. It’s got some of the epic feel of the last record – you can imagine this blowing apart a stadium – but it has much more texture. The soft/loud dynamic is finely balanced, so that when they do eventually light the fuse it doesn’t feel contrived. It’s emotionally fraught, but doesn’t pretend to the same kind of shattering intimacy from The Midnight Organ Fight. Which is an important thing for them. It speaks well of their ability to paint a picture of damage and loss, rather than rending open the wounds directly and letting the viscera pour out. This is a more fully realized artistic object, less powerful perhaps, but making up for it with superb craftsmanship.
The other very strong track is “Home From War.” Again, it certainly still sounds like a Frightened Rabbit song, but is notably distinct as well. In fact, it reminds far more of their debut record than the more full-bodied stuff that has come since. All their best songs in recent years have felt like tidal forces, but this one feels a lot more like a train rattling down a track. It’s a nice change.
So that’s the good. These two songs, combined with the previously mentioned “Fuck This Place” highlight everything great about where this band is going. Unfortunately, the other songs on the EP don’t really live up to that promise. “Boxing Night” sounds like a song that’s halfway done. It’s got the component parts but doesn’t appear to have been built into an actual song. It just chugs along without variation until it’s done. “Off” is much further off the beaten path for them, but only because it seems to have given up on the idea of a melody or rhythm. And the less said about “Wedding Gloves” the better. Yikes.
Bottom line: “State Hospital” is the only must-own song here, but if you’re anything close to as big on this band as me, you’ll want to get the whole thing just to see where they’re going.