killmoms

The modern leper’s broken arm

It’s not TOO often that my loving girlfriend recommends a CD I really like. It’s not her fault, I’m just kind of hard to please. But in the last few weeks she’s knocked not one but TWO out of the park—two CDs I’d never heard of that I love.

The first is the raw-yet-polished Scottish indie rock/pop of Frightened Rabbit. Their album The Midnight Organ Fight is at once driving and relaxed, moving through a number of musical idioms even while its lyrics are brooding, desperate, tortured, and ultimately some of the most powerful (and clever) I’ve heard this year. It’s no overstatement to say that this record contains some of the best writing I’ve heard since I flipped shit about The National. Album-opener “The Modern Leper” gets things off to a rousing start as lead singer Scott Hutchinson delivers one of my favorite lyrics of this year:

Is that you in front of me
Coming back for even more of exactly the same?
Well you must be a masochist
To love a modern leper on his last leg

Lyrically, the majority of the album focuses strongly on characters frustrated with love, with life, even with God. Confronted with his love leaving for another man in the lilting “Good Arms vs. Bad Arms,” the speaker pleads “And leave the rest at arm’s length / Keep your naked flesh under your favorite dress.” First single “The Twist” finds its character opining to “I need company / I need human heat.” Yet four songs later (atop a dangerously catchy tune) Hutchinson declares that “it takes more than fucking someone to keep yourself warm.” It is this album-wide back-and-forth that gives The Midnight Organ Fight its emotional resonance. Hutchinson’s characters thrum with a painful and honest melancholy that is both sympathetic and affecting.

Of course, Hutchinson is only one part of Frightened Rabbit, and while I’m wont to focus on good lyrics I’d be remiss if I didn’t compliment the band’s strong song crafting skills. Scott and brother Grant on drums, along with Billy Kennedy on guitar and Andy Monaghan on keyboards, build up songs whose pop hooks and forward momentum seem to run counter to the lyrical tone of the album. It’s the same dichotomy that The National has used to good effect, and while the two bands share only passing similarities in sound, there’s no mistaking the tactic. And it’s effective—”Head Rolls Off” brings crisp drums, simple progression and a singable melody, even as Scott delivers the controversial “Jesus is just a Spanish boy’s name / How come one man got so much fame?” Most songs lack an especially powerful low-end due to the band’s lack of a bassist, but that oomph is more than made up for by the pounding drums and forward guitars. Scott’s wavering delivery and heavy Scottish accent might prove divisive for some listeners, but its raw, honest sound aids the lyrics’ heft.

Winterpills’ 2007 effort The Light Divides, by contrast, is a more laid-back affair—a pretty indie pop five-piece hailing from Massachusetts. Theirs is (for the most part) the quieter, more back-room sort of melancholy that one might expect. Not a revolutionary CD, perhaps—one could easily cite a litany of indie pop bands who’ve explored similar territory—but beautiful and solidly-executed nonetheless. Songwriter Philip Price and keyboardist Flora Reed breathe beautiful harmonies into the restrained words of Price’s characters, as the band backs with pitch-perfect acoustic-focused pop arrangements.

Like Frightened Rabbit, there is a sense of desperation about this album. “You could make me feel so good / If you’d come here and cry” Price sings on “Lay Your Heartbreak.” Later: “I think I finally understand / The way a broken arm can hate the hand / The way a farmer hates his crop / The way a lawyer hates the honest cop.” Later still: “I bear witness to / How your dying choice betrayed your voice.” From start to finish these compositions’ emotional cores seem to embody the same cold barrenness so many associate with the band’s native New England. It falls to the band’s arrangements to keep us from slitting our wrists, and their cautious but tight arrangements keep the album’s outlook from being downright depressing.

The album’s standouts, of course, are also its poppiest numbers—”Lay Your Heartbreak” and “Broken Arm” both are catchy, melodic numbers that (at first) steal the show. Yet it’s the album’s quieter and more considered cuts—the hushed battle for solitude in acoustic-plucked “Hide Me,” or the country-tinged “Shameful,” or even the cadence-changing guitar-gauze of “Eclipse”—where the band displays the amplifying power of its restraint. Each element become heightened by the songs’ relative sparseness. The album unfolds at an unhurried pace, which at first gives it the feeling of being somewhat sleepy. Further listening reveals the germ of each song though, and each has something to offer.

Both The Midnight Organ Fight and The Light Divides tread the same roads, though perhaps in different shoes and at different speeds. Whatever their differences, they’re both a couple of the albums I’ve been thankful to discover this year.

Filed by matt at November 29th, 2008 under Music