Frightened Rabbit: "State Hospital"

Full disclosure: when I first Mumford & Sons (on the fucking radio, no less), I thought Frightened Rabbit had sanded off their rough edges and were going for polished mainstream chart success. Thankfully that was not the case -this was a different, previously unheard group altogether - and a couple years later both bands still toil away in mutually compatible co-existent at opposite ends of the "indie" folk spectrum.


Frightened Rabbit have struggled to capitalize on the success of their breakthrough album, 2008's sophomore The Midnight Organ Fight, which netted nearly unanimous critical acclaim (including an 8.1 in Pitchfork) and in fact ended up on numerous year end "best of" lists. 2010's follow up Winter of Mixed Drinks was similarly well received (though Pitchfork demurred with a paltry 6.6 score), but their well deserved ascent seemed to be stymied by the meteoric rise in visibility of the somewhat similar sounding Mumford clan.

See what y'all did? Now the band is relegated to hashing out brief EP's, with the September 25 release of the four track State Hospital following the trio of cuts assembled for last year's A Frightened Rabbit EP. This is epic, grandiose shit released on a major label (Atlantic) so it's high time y'all stop humming "I really fucked it up this time" and get with the program.