Monday, April 11h, 2016

Artist: Frightened Rabbit

Track: “Death Dream“

I remember when I first started getting into music and it felt like every song I heard was speaking directly to me.  It was a great era in my life because everything seemed to carry unprecedented weight, as if the artists were sitting down at a table with me and hashing out my emotions on paper.  As the years progressed that feeling obviously fell by the wayside – I mean you can only be awestruck by everything you hear for so long, right?  Music soon became more about the technical aspects – did that bridge really work?  would this song have been better if they amped up the guitars and pushed the vocals back in the mix a little?  There’s something to be said for any level of music appreciation,  but the older I got, the more everything started to sound like an imitation of something I’d already heard.  For lack of a better description, music’s meaning in my life just hollowed out a little bit.

Enter Frightened Rabbit’s Painting of a Panic Attack.  Now, I haven’t even finished listening to this album yet but I can already tell you that there are certain songs on here capable of totally wrecking me at any given moment.  I know this because it’s been forever since I’ve felt my eyes getting misty upon first listen of a track, or felt a lump in my throat at a reference that strikes shockingly close to home.  Although I’m typing this as I’m only seven songs deep into the album, I’ve already been confronted with such sensations three times.  I could have picked any of those instances to do a quick piece on, but I figured I’d go with the first and hardest-hitting instance: “Death Dream.”

“Death Dream” is in essence the title track because at one point Scott Hutchinson sings, “A still life is the last I will see of you / A painting of a panic attack.”  It’s altogether beautiful and morbid, depicting the blackness of blood on the deceased’s back yet describing the apparent suicide as eloquently at times as “Butterflied arms tell me that this one has flown” or “A still life is the last I will see of you.”  The way the song coldly echoes in the background, with Hutchinson singing in a practically matter-of-fact approach, really drives home the sense of realism…it’s as if he just walked into a room and is describing what he sees around him, totally in shock yet at the same time sensing relief.  Musically, lyrically, emotionally – it truly is a painting of a panic attack, and it is as emotionally hard-hitting as anything I’ve felt since I’ve started listening to music.  I still have more of this album to get through, but I’m ready to let it keep bringing me down in the best way possible.

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