Frightened Rabbit: The Midnight Organ Fight

Screaming at your wife in the dead of night, you reach inside your own body, grabbing your heart and ripping it from its designated place within your shell. You launch at it at her, screaming abuse the whole time. She does the same, producing a lung and hurling it in your direction, shouting about another man and how it’s over, so deal with it.

However sexual oriented Frightened Rabbit's second LP’s title looks and sounds, (hell, even the band said it was a euphemism for sex) this reviewer cannot help but only see the scene above. For this album is the audio personification of a break-up. It’s as tragic as it is beautiful, both comical and callous and at the same time gentle and learned.

You won’t find love in a hole, it takes more than fucking someone to keep yourself warm.- Keep Yourself Warm

This album is basically an ode to females and “their ways”. It’s unbelievably honest and contains subject matter that even the most hardened of men can relate to. It’s this fact that makes the record feel so real and truthful. There’s some lines in this album that you didn’t realise were true until hearing them through the mouth of vocalist/lyricist/genius Scott Hutchison.

Poke at my iris, why can't I cry about this? Maybe there is something that you know that I don't? We adopt a brand new language, communicate through pursed lips and you try not to put on any sexy clothes or graces. – Poke

Dotted throughout the LP are little instrumental tracks which in some albums sound relatively unnecessary and disrupt the listening but here, they’re welcomed. Each sounds similar to the previous or next song and serve instead as a pretty intro or outro to the songs they’re sandwiched in-between.

It’s surprising to see such sophistication in one album as the music and production, timing and musicianship are top notch. It’s almost a contradiction to Hutchison's lyrics where he either begs for someone to come back to him or tells them where they can shove it like an angry teen.

I might not want you back but I want to kill him – Good Arms vs. Bad Arms

The more listens the album gets, the more alcohol drenched some of the songs sound. Who’d You Kill Now? is a slurred, acoustic piece that sounds like two men crying over their own sorrows, strumming when they feel like it and singing the most minimalist of lyrics. It’s this very feeling that comes off of each track that makes Frightened Rabbit such a brilliant band. You’re not only hearing the tracks, your there with them, witnessing the situations and emotions.

Lets pretend I'm attractive and then you won't mind, you can twist for a while. It's the night, I can be who you like and I'll quietly leave before it gets light. – The Twist

My Backwards Walk is a personal highlight and along with Poke, sits as the most emotional track on the album. Simply put, you should listen to it yourself instead of reading what is said here as it simply won’t do it justice.

I'm working hard on walking out, shoes keep sticking to the ground. My clothes won't let me close the door, ‘cause the trousers seem to love your floor. – My Backwards Walk

The Midnight Organ Fight is not only a showcase for musical talent but also an album of modern life and the troubles that come with it. It portrays break-ups, make-ups, nights gone horribly wrong and shows the soul of a human who has obviously had his fair share of hard times with love. It’s an emotional rollercoaster where the listener feels every twist, turn and loop. An album that reveals everything a man feels but doesn’t say in the most fragile and poetic of ways.