Frightened Rabbit unveil new album, “Painting Of A Panic Attack” (video)

 February 20, 2016 - 15:08 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - It's going to be a very good year. You can tell because Frightened Rabbit have just announced their new album, Painting Of A Panic Attack, Gigwise said.

After teasing fans with new music, the returning Scots reveal full details of the long-awaited follow-up to 2013's stellar Pedestrian Verse and frontman Scott Hutchison's triumphant solo debut as Owl John - and it's been produced by no less than The National's Aaron Dessner.

“Great songwriters touch a nerve," says Dessner, "and I think Scott really touches a nerve with these songs. To me, lyrically, this album is a step above anything he’s written before.”

The album is said to be largely concerned with Hutchison's time in Los Angeles, after he moved from Scotland to the States in 2014 to be with his girlfriend - quickly realising that the city just wasn’t for him. The record "sings of the loneliness the change instilled in him, of the disparity between the rich and the throngs of homeless in the city, and of his daily struggle with his new life and homesickness for Scotland."

"The new stuff sounds sparser, it's less guitar driven," frontman Scott 'Owl John Hutchison exclusively told Gigwise last year. "Potentially darker as well, but we'll wait and see. The way that it's coming together, I don't know how it's going to sound until the last day."

"Moodwise it's been a very difficult record for me," he admits. "There's a lot more darkness on it, which is strange because I've been living in Los Angeles and it's constantly bright. I've gone through various states of turmoil there and I think that's going to be evident. There was a little while when I was writing songs and editing out emotion, everyone was wondering if I was alright because I wasn't expressing anything particularly meaningful.

"These were demoes that I was doing at the tail-end of last year - then about three weeks before we were due to start recording, I went away to a cabin and was writing completely fresh on my own. That ended up being like a quarter of the record. I just poured a lot of stuff out, so part of it is going to be a snapshot of how I felt at that time."