Belle and Sebastian are from Glasgow, but fellow Glaswegians Frightened Rabbit are nothing like B&S. Instead, they display their city's love of another sound: rough-edged, unpolished indie rock. On their charismatic debut Sing the Greys, Frightened Rabbit keep the instrumentation simple-- drums, bass, guitar, and straightforward washes of keyboard and accordion. The arrangements, too, are linear and humble, often blending shaggy elements with rigid ones to create a sense of purposeful drift. Setting loose guitar jangle against a tight bass pulse, the excellent "Yawns" finds singer Scott (just Scott) wrapping his coarse moan around some stirring moments of relationship inertia ("She yawns because she's bored/ He yawns because he can't sleep any more"). "Go-Go Girls" starts off tightly coiled, with a hellacious circular bassline zipping through volleys of percussion, before cascading into a triumphant garage-pop shuffle.
Camera Obscura are from Glasgow, too, but Frightened Rabbit's not like them, either. Where Camera Obscura's roots plunge into the annals of music history from Lee Hazelwood to Dory Previn, Frightened Rabbit's rambunctious bursts of enthusiasm seem to refer to little beyond indie rock's ahistorical everymen-- dudes having a good time with music in whichever way they please. Indie rock loves apathy, and Frightened Rabbit pay lip service to that tradition on "The Greys". It's a catchy, ragged ode to numbness ("What's the blues when you've got the greys?") that's belied by its impassioned delivery: Frightened Rabbit don't go to great lengths to sell disaffection; this is fun, unpretentious music. Two of the members are brothers who pose for their press photos in Lucha Libre masks and only go by their first names, if that gives you some idea.
Mogwai are from Glasgow, too, but Frightened Rabbit's definitely not like Mogwai. Where Mogwai's music is all about creating a grand atmosphere that dwarfs the listener, with little emphasis on the band members' personalities, Frightened Rabbit's is all about homely charm. They take a stab at ambiance on three brief, pleasant interludes-- the fuzz wash and martial clatter of "The First Incident", the baggy harmonies of "The Second Incident", and the choppy keys of "The Final Incident"-- and at the epic, with the seven-minute-plus "Square 9". But for the most part, grandeur is not their thing-- the thumping drums, silvery guitars, and blurring vocals of "Music Now" all unfold in modest human scale. Naysayers will find an easy jibe in the lyric "Make your music/ Make it so loud and so trite," but for Frightened Rabbit, this is a rallying cry, a rejection of the stylish and self-serious, and a redemption of the trite through the embrace of its universality.
