Compare The Rabbit Dot Com
Have all my Easters come at once? Has Beatrix Potter been creeping back into children’s libraries? Is Watership Down: A 3D Special in film production? For one reason or another, bunny fever is upon us. And it has nothing to do with a certain old pervert’s Hollywood mansion…
Following in the footsteps of ‘The’ as a pre-requisite prefix when christening a new collective of “indie” musicians appears to be a rather more fluffy suffix… ‘Rabbit’. Not the sort of nomenclature usually expected of young guitar-wielding upstarts looking for a sex, drugs and rock’n’roll lifestyle, would you agree? Which would go some way to explaining my recent puzzlement.
A few months back, Q Magazine played host to a series of London gigs to promote new acts for 2010. Feeling somewhat sceptical about the never pausing carousel of Next Big Things, I made light of my potential neuron famine at the hands of self-inflicted pressure to continually retrain the brain in up-and-coming bandname familiarity. Especially as variations become ever slighter. There are the ampersands (Marina & the Machine, anyone?) the colours (Black Kids vs Black Lips), not to mention the acronyms (M.I.A., MGMT… LMNOP). My short term memory has as much of a chance as a five-year-old hard drive. As a result, I in true Glaswegian fashion made the error of shooting my mouth off about a homegrown beardy Scottish collective called Frightened Rabbit only to stand bruised and bashful as six stylishly clad Brooklynites took centre stage under the nom de plume White Rabbits. Seriously, what the buck teeth is that all about?
Well, a fortnight ago I would have sworn on my own pickled brain cells that supporting Spoon at Glasgow’s King Tuts were Frightened Rabbit, whom I’d been itching to finally enjoy live. To my horror those six familiar White Rabbit faces appeared to move before me again. Once is honest mistake, twice is premature dementia. Suffice to say I now feel it my sworn duty to warn you all about the two bands vying for your distinction: White Rabbits and Frightened Rabbit.
White Rabbits’ latest release is titled It’s Frightening (yes, this sort of tale simply can’t be written). I’ve always found the red-eyed albino rabbits quite unnerving, even demonic. Watching Monty Python’s Holy Grail as a child, the idea of a deadly bunny killer struck me as more nightmarishly probable than outrageously hilarious. It would appear suitable then that White Rabbits are quite ferocious in their treatment of live music. Album opener Percussion Gun momentarily transports me to the stands at the Edinburgh Tattoo. It does exactly what it says on the tin: a militant drumbeat most commonly heard in a drill sergeant’s barracks forces a partially-deafened crowd to stand to attention. It’s a thumper (no pun intended). Elsewhere Rudie Fails is a nasal Turin Brakes-esque take on Radiohead’s Optimistic. In fact, their entire sophomore release with its frantic keyboards, fragmented buzzsaw guitars and off-kilter timing would come over quite convincingly had Kid A never been written.
Frightened Rabbit, on the other hand, with their soft Scots rasps are now on album number three, The Winter Of Mixed Drinks, which comes out today. Opening track Things also has a cantankerous percussive flavour but these creatures sound more probably to be the Davids to their rivals’ Goliaths. Despite a momentous resonance on epic laments such as The Wrestle, lead singer Scott Hutchison’s quivering voice is at once insistent and vulnerable. The Celtic collective may never reach the dizzy heights of Snow Patrol but their material resembles that which Gary Lightbody should be writing if his band weren’t sounding so, well, Snore Patrol. These gems are full of true conviction and rousing emotion, which no doubt when performed live are quite the mood stirrers.
If you are going to see either of these artists do yourself a favour: make sure you are fully informed as to which you will be viewing. I suggest talking aloud, writing mnemonics, doing last minute checks. Otherwise you could find yourself in my position: twice awaiting an introverted and quietly euphoric evening courtesy of scruffy Scotsmen, twice violently jerked and rudely awakened by George Of The Jungle-style banging arty types. Like Easter eggs, these rabbit-y rockers are deceptively similar on the outside but often entirely different on the inside. It’s just down to personal preference. In other words: How do you eat yours?
