Frightened Rabbit: The Midnight Organ Fight

"It takes more than fucking someone you don't know

to keep warm," sings Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison on "Keep

Yourself Warm," and it sounds like resignation as well as a grand statement of

purpose. It's the emotional apex of the Scottish band's dark, terrific second

album, which circles the drain of failed relationships and bad sex—and

somehow finds sparks of hope in mountains of crushing hopelessness. (Think a

slightly sunnier version of Arab Strap, another pack of dour Scots.) Supposedly

inspired by a particularly harsh breakup, The Midnight Organ Fight finds Hutchison longing

folkishly for better times (the jangling "Old Old Fashioned"), then

considering—but ultimately dismissing—suicide ("Floating In The

Forth"). On "Poke," he suggests this method for dealing with a failed

relationship: "Should we kick its cunt in / and watch as it dies from

bleeding" It's all dressed in familiar-sounding indie-rock, with bits of

Sebadoh, The Long Winters, and early U2 providing the road map. But it's

Hutchison's utterly believable desperation and frank lyrics that push the whole

thing from good to great. It doesn't make for easy listening, but nothing this

flatly honest and powerful ever is.