JUNE 18 / 9:00PM
21+ / $12 Advance

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Nectar Presents:

Frightened Rabbit

• Oxford Collapse
• Tu Fawning

FRIGHTENED RABBIT

Though the past year has seen Frightened Rabbit finally step into public view, with more extensive touring and some recordings now publicly available, the past few years have largely been about the band quietly, commitedly honing their sound, and cultivating their art. Now a three-piece comprising Scott, Billy and Grant, the origins of the band are rooted in 2003, when Scott began playing solo shows under the name Frightened Rabbit, mostly in support of fellow art-schoolers Shitdisco. Recordings were made on a tascam 4-track recorder, with Scott playing all the instruments (some more proficiently than others). Though looser, sparser, and certainly more lo-fi in terms of production values, their early demo’s still attest to a burgeoning talent with a defined personality, and a now familiar penchant for being able to nail a near perfect pop song. In 2004 Scott’s brother Grant moved to Glasgow, contributing drums to certain recorded tracks, and playing live. Frightened Rabbit became louder and better. They burnt 50 copies of their subsequent demo, and sent some out to labels, resulting in three tracks being hosted on the FatCat MP3/demo website, and marking the beginning of a wonderful relationship. In 2006, Billy joined the band playing primarily second guitar, making Frightened Rabbit in the band’s own words, a wee bit better and louder still. That February they went into The Diving Bell Lounge studio with Glasgow based producer Marcus Mackay to record some songs over the course of a week. The intention was to record a better quality demo, but the resultant recordings ended up as the bands debut LP ‘Sing The Greys’, of which 1000 copies were pressed and released that May on home grown label Hits The Fan. An incredibly accomplished live outfit (seemingly without any effort whatsoever), further live dates followed into 2007, including a brief but succesful US jaunt, culminating in a sold-out show at The Mercury Lounge in NYC, before the album was even available in the US. After an intense spate of writing, rehearsing, recording, and remixing, and of course playing more live shows, ‘Sings The Greys’ was remastered by Alan Douches, and re-released in significantly revamped form by FatCat Autumn 2007, along with debut single ‘Be Less Rude’. Rounding off the year with the incredible 'It's Christmas So We'll Stop' single, 2008 promises to be another busy one for Frightened Rabbit. Following less than six months in tow of the aforementioned LP, ‘Head Rolls Off’ precedes the bands forthcoming album, ‘Midnight Organ Fight’, a progression in terms of songwriting, sonic depth, and as a fully realised entity. Recorded by Peter Katis (Mercury Rev, Interpol) over the space of two weeks, and mixed over the ensuing fortnight, ‘Midnight Organ Fight’ was conceived and realised in a much shorter time span than its predecessor, with the intention of creating a more coherent, ‘pop’ sounding album. Yet although musically more immediate, vitally, the band have not forsaken the personality or passion of any of their earlier recordings.

OXFORD COLLAPSE

BITS is album number four for Brooklyn’s Oxford Collapse, but it’s a first for them in many ways. Some of those ways will be immediately apparent to those of you who’ve followed their raucous, boyish exploits since their 2006 Sub Pop debut Remember the Night Parties, or from their earlier efforts. Their charming lack of guile, combined with a capable and focused aim towards the better of the ‘80s college-rock cognoscenti and Trouser Press favorites, has made for music of a mindset that has found its way into backyards and across rooftops all over the city. Much of Oxford Collapse’s earlier output reflected an almost preternatural awareness of this mindset and was/is excitable and bounding against prison walls of their own device. BITS corrects for time and experience, and shows a band artistically riding its own peaks. The tension is still present in their three-way interplay (listen to them firing off of each other, squealing out of control at the end of “Back of the Yards”) but the direction and presence in this set is open, flowing against anything they’ve done before. It’s the sound of fun turning into purpose, of a great band writing and playing their best songs, and knowing how great that feels. Inspired by the ethics of the Minutemen and the sense of tireless work embodied by that trio and the rest of the SST Records roster, Oxford Collapse wrote material beyond what they would need for BITS-—30 songs by their count. Surplus tracks recorded during these sessions went to the “Spike of Bensonhurst” 7” for Flameshovel, the Hann-Byrd 12” for Comedy Minus One, and were taken on tour this year in the U.S. and in England with We Are Scientists and Frightened Rabbit. Strategies to create this much material required a step back from the creative process. They played what they felt. Time was precious, over-thinking was not, and the boys tore through their influences. “The economy has been bad,” deflects Michael Pace, guitarist and vocalist, “so we decided to write more songs. Shorter ones, too, because we’ve never released a record without one really long track in there, and we didn’t think about doing that this time.” Drummer Dan Fetherston, who takes part in writing the band’s lyrics along with Pace and bassist Adam Rizer, concurs. “A lot of these songs didn’t have words. We were standing outside of the studio figuring out a lot of these lyrics right before we recorded them.” The spontaneity of these sessions led to an off-handedly relaxed focus on what was being sung, and the subjects in question trade sincerity for encryption. Recording was handled in chunks of time over 2007 with Eric Emm at the Brothers Studios, and Chad Matheny (who records under the name Emperor X) in spaces all over town. They’re in their element, working hard, bailing out ricochet-biscuit melodies and big sing-along choruses, but still able to craft beach-bum campfire pop strum (“Featherbeds”) and delicate string duets (“A Wedding”) amid all the “straight-for-the-jangular” attacks inside. This is the new Oxford Collapse, as a band and as a record: straightforward; memorable; mature, but not necessarily grown-up; just better. And better’s all they needed to canonize themselves in the ranks of bands doing something to connect the past to the present. It’s all heart and ingenuity, the joyous racket that connects C86 pop to the present, made by three guys who are realizing that they can be mayors.

LINKS

• Frightened Rabbit on MySpace
• Oxford Collapse on Myspace
• Tu Fawning on Myspace

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