Panic Prevention: Frightened Rabbit Interview
Frightened Rabbit are by no means a band averse to drama both on record and off of it, so perhaps it’s no surprise that their 2016 has played out in whirlwind – and often turbulent – fashion. We speak to guitarist Andy Monaghan about touring, tension and transatlanticism.
April saw the release of Frightened Rabbit's fifth LP, and their boldest yet; Painting of a Panic Attack is a decisive left turn away from its predecessor. Pedestrian Verse was their first on Atlantic Records and sounded every inch the major label debut; epic, packed with singalongs and occasionally prone to bombast. Their latest offering is a far cry in that respect; with The National’s Aaron Dessner manning the boards, the Selkirk outfit have produced their sparsest and darkest collection of songs to date, favouring quiet, nerve-ridden reflection where Pedestrian Verse never shied away from excess.
Not that Painting of a Panic Attack is in any way a hangover, even if it might have been. By the time Frightened Rabbit wrapped up touring for Pedestrian Verse in late 2013, they were falling apart, with burnout taking a heavy toll and intra-band relationships suffering. Frontman Scott Hutchison, guitarist Andy Monaghan and keyboardist Simon Liddell decamped to Mull to work on an experimental side-project, Owl John, and by the time he was promoting the trio’s self-titled debut the following summer, Hutchison – never less than brutally honest – was telling anybody who’d listen that the project had saved Frightened Rabbit from the threat of dissolution.
“The relationships were certainly strained at the end of the Pedestrian Verse tour,” admits Monaghan over the phone from Glasgow. “I think Scott was probably looking for a little bit of distance from Grant (Hutchison, drums) for a while. It’s understandable; brothers in the studio can have some knee-jerk reactions, which in the moment can be very intense. That can be a good thing, too, but Scott wanted to work on something that would provide him with a different experience, and that was cool. We all needed a break.”
Changes in Frightened Rabbit
With three-fifths of the band focusing on Owl John, Grant – the younger of the two Hutchison brothers – eschewed music entirely for a while, cycling 1100 miles for charity from Edinburgh to Ireland via London. Bassist Billy Kennedy jumped at the rare opportunity to spend a while as a homebody, whilst guitarist Gordon Skene bowed out altogether, to be replaced by Liddell. “Being in a band means being in a relationship with the other guys, and Simon’s persona is very different to Gordon’s,” says Monaghan of Skene’s departure.
“I’ve known Simon for ages, maybe fifteen years, and he’s both a calming influence and an excitable one in the studio. It’s very different to having Gordon in the band. The Pedestrian Verse sessions were great, but people change, and expect something else from our relationship, so this is where we’re at now.”
In all, the entire period of post-Pedestrian Verse palate cleansing for the band lasted all of six months; they were back among festival bills by the summer of 2014. Early work on the songs that would make up Painting of a Panic Attack began then, but with a significant twist on the usual formula; Scott had left Scotland, where he’d lived all his life, for Los Angeles, where his then-girlfriend was living. It meant a less confrontational style of songwriting, but an unnatural one, too.
“It meant working in a very different way, and it definitely wasn’t as immediate as it is when we’re all in the same room,” explains Monaghan. “I guess, to some extent, it did mean that we weren’t looking over our shoulders, thinking 'what does Scott think of this?' We experimented a little bit, and for better or worse, elements of that survive on the record. It’s just that there was no immediate feedback; you’re firing ideas back and forth and it takes maybe a day or two for somebody to really rip them apart.
"It worked, but I wouldn’t throw myself back into that same scenario again. I think things are better when you’re all together; it’s fiery, and people can get emotional, but everybody believes in their ideas right there in the moment, and think they’re worth fighting for.”
Working with Aaron Dessner
Once the basic sketches of the record’s songs were down, the group found themselves in the market for a producer, and word reached The National's guitarist Dessner via a mutual friend. In November, with demos ready to go and The National touring Europe for a final run of shows behind Trouble Will Find Me, Dessner headed to Glasgow to get to know the band better, and hear the new cuts for himself. Once both sides hit it off, the album proper was laid down between Dessner’s home studio in Brooklyn and a nineteenth-century church in upstate New York.
Dessner, for his part, was plenty hands-on, contributing piano lines and engaging his fiercely analytical brain to help neutralise Scott's penchant for sweeping drama, reigning in the band’s less nuanced impulses. “Aaron listened to our past records and seemed to think they were a wee bit nervous,” laughs Monaghan.
“He thought they were a little bit on edge, and that we should relax, and that probably informed the slightly stripped-back approach we took. He was good at getting us to move on after the take he liked best, and not to try to go back and fix it. It was nice to have a sort of steadying hand around because, in a lot of ways, we were starting again. I think Pedestrian Verse was kind of the culmination of a lot of ideas and sounds that Scott had in his head for years, which gave us more of a blank slate for this record than we’d had in a long while.”
Painting of a Panic Attack was released in April to yet another raft of rave reviews and with the band refreshed and ready to take to the road again. In an interview with Drowned in Sound at the time, Scott sounded confident that the group would be able to avoid the kind of burnout that tainted the latter stages of the Pedestrian Verse tour; new management was in place, and the need for breathing space to work on new ideas was stressed as being of paramount importance. Frightened Rabbit toured the UK and the USA in the spring, and then hit the summer festival circuit harder than ever before.
A second raft of dates across North America was lined up for late summer and early Autumn; the band are as popular there as they are anywhere, thanks to persistent touring and prominent opening slots with the likes of Death Cab for Cutie and, of course, The National. Shortly before this new leg began, there was an almighty wobble. First, in August, Scott embarked upon a drunken late-night Twitter tirade – equal parts self-deprecating and self-pitying – that called into question the group’s future. “Goodbye to Frightened Rabbit,” he typed after advising his followers not to buy the band’s records. “All it has ever been is me boring people with lies and making creative currency out of other people’s hurt.”
As it turned out, no harm was done; Scott, with the benefit of clear thinking, deleted and recanted the following day, and cancelled a couple of shows to give him time to get his head straight. Later the same month, though, a couple of weeks before the American tour opener in Omaha, Nebraska, the band announced on Facebook that Grant would be sitting out the dates. An eventual return was promised, but no timeframe provided. The explanation was that he was taking a break “to avoid jeopardising (his) relationships and the future of the band.” Hot on the heels of Scott’s Twitter travails, it didn’t sound promising. The first two shows they played without Grant were in Glasgow and Swansea, opening for Noel Gallagher. The irony will not have been lost on the group's followers.
Frightened Rabbit's tour plans
Happily, he returned to the fold quicker than most might have expected, only missing the opening seven shows of the U.S. run. “It’s like I said before; when you’re in a band, the relationships you have with other people are really, really intense,” says Monaghan.
“Grant just needed a step back, and a reset. He’s back with us now, and we’re all very, very happy about it. We make these mistakes and go through these experiences together, and we’re getting better at recognising the signs when somebody’s burned out or having a big life examination, not knowing what they want from the band, or their future. And that’s fine; sometimes you have to ask yourself, 'do I want to be driving around the world in a van with five guys now I’m in my mid-thirties?'"
For Monaghan, at least, the answer is yes. After a jaunt through Europe, Frightened Rabbit embark on an extensive UK tour through November and December, culminating in three nights at the Barrowlands in Glasgow; an uncommonly long string of dates in Ireland is already on the books for next February, too. It certainly looks as if the band are back on track.
“We were just talking when we were over in America about what a nice year we’ve had,” reflects Monaghan. “I don’t think it’s been too heavy. I’m definitely up for more touring in 2017, and we want to make a start on demoing stuff for the next record as well. I just want to keep things moving, with these guys I love making tunes with.”
Frightened Rabbit’s UK tour begins at Manchester Cathedral on 30 Nov, rounding off the year with three dates at Glasgow's Barrowland Ballroom (16, 17 and 18 Dec)