White Rabbits – It’s Frightening (Music Review)
By Bill Purdy • Aug 20th, 2009 • Category: Categories, Indie Rock, ReviewsWhite Rabbits
It’s Frightening
TBD
Rating 2.5 out of 5
From the first few seconds of the opening track (“Percussion Gun”) of White Rabbits’ It’s Frightening, you know exactly what you’re in for: a good old fashioned rock and roll record. One that happens to sound a lot like Spoon record.
That’s no coincidence. Spoon’s Britt Daniel twisted the knobs and gave It’s Frightening the same distinctively effortless swagger and precise sheen that characterizes his own band’s sound.
It’s Frightening is, essentially, a “formula” record. It follows a blueprint developed in the 1970s, when artists like Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, and Bob Seger ruled the airwaves and the charts with a gritty working-class sound that incorporated a singer (or two), a drummer, a guitarist (or two) a bass player, and a piano (maybe) on exuberant, catchy sing-along tunes. Somewhere along the way the formula was further refined while, at the same time, artists that followed it were marginalized to independent labels. Bands like Spoon, The Hold Steady, and The Black Lips have traded sales for critical praise — and the devotion of a small but fervid fan base, built slowly and deliberately by a nurturing independent record label.
Unfortunately, the “formula” doesn’t seem to be the proper aesthetic choice for White Rabbits, a band whose 2007 full-length debut, Fort Nightly, was much more stylistically scattershot – and much more interesting. While the songs on It’s Frightening are good (particularly the three songs that open the album), they don’t stick around for long once the record’s stopped playing.
Imagine the material performed live, however, and it’s the kind of stuff you’d expect to hear performed at a local dive bar late on a Friday night, the air fragrant with draft beer and cigarettes, ceiling fans ineffectively cooling the gathered masses. Good, old-fashioned rock and roll.
If White Rabbits can capture that sound — instead of Spoon’s — their next album should be one hell of a record.
Links:
White Rabbits: http://whiterabbitsmusic.com/
Music Essay on Fort Nightly: http://www.zaptownmag.com/2008/12/white-rabbits-fort-nightly
Bill Purdy is not a musician. He hasn't a musical bone in his body. That pretty much disqualifies him as a musician (you don't want to be in the room on the rare occasion when he tries to make music), but it apparently doesn't impair his ability to consume music — especially new music — at a ravenous pace. He also likes to tell anyone within earshot what he thinks of music, fancies himself a critic of some sort. We, of course, know better.
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