Interview “If something feels right, then maybe it’s right. That’s what this album proved” - Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchison talks 10 years of ‘The Midnight Organ Fight’

It wasn't something we thought about at all until it was suggested to us, to be honest. It's an album that - and I know this from speaking to many people over the course of the last ten years - means a great deal to a lot of people. I think we slowly came around to the idea of celebrating its birthday, having not been interested at all really prior to that.

There were a few that we haven't played for quite some time. It's really interesting to dig back into it and remember what headspace you were in when you wrote it, and trying to work out whether we should be completely faithful to the album, or whether we should do something slightly different. That whole process was pretty interesting. Almost assessing our own work as if it was another band. It's weird feeling quite removed from that process, so far on, and quite removed from the person that wrote it.

They're all essentially small short movies that I'm unconsciously acting out, and it's the same imagery coming back to me with each of those songs. It's an amazing thing, kind of like a photographic memory. It's strange to have such a visceral account available to you of something that happened so long ago. It's like having a small, 45-minute film of your life that you can play back at will. It's not a common thing to have. Everyone has memories, but these are so intrinsic and tied into certain lines in a song.

Not at all. I think that's partly why it exists as it is, because there wasn't that much thought in it. In reality, [first album] 'Sing The Greys' and 'The Midnight Organ Fight' are almost like one album. All those songs were pretty much written at the same time. Over the time 'Sing The Greys' came out, we'd already recorded 'The Midnight Organ Fight'. It was quite a private writing affair. When I was writing it, not many people knew about the band, and I think you can write in a much more open way in that circumstance. Listening back, it seems horrifically open to me. To go back to that, a point when you're not so acutely aware that people are going to hear these thoughts, is impossible, and that's the difference between that album and everything else that came after it. After that album, we had an audience in a lot of places, and your brain processes writing differently, and starts censoring itself without really thinking about it. ['The Midnight Organ Fight'] was a pure representation of thought without any censorship at all. I appreciate it for that, but also feel a bit fuckin' embarrassed at times.

It was a bit weird at times. Having people sing along to your songs is always amazing, but at the start, when the audience first started to really come, and there'd be singalongs at our shows, I'd just think 'Fuuuck! They've reeeeally listened to this haven't they!' However, I console myself with the fact that I don't actually think that when people listen to that album and take it on board, they're not actually envisaging my life - they're envisaging their own. I don't think the protagonist in your movie, soundtracked by this album, is me. It's you.

Yeah exactly. That was the start of me investigating a way of eeking the door open a little wider, externalising my own thoughts so people are then able to project them onto their own experiences. That's the thing about really personal songwriting. It's not actually as personal as it first appears.

Yeah! It's trying to not have an overbearing amount of first person accounts in there. There are a lot of those [on 'The Midnight Organ Fight'] but what I always tried to do is widen the language so it can be a little more universal, and I think that's the key to it. It's a balance I'm still trying to achieve. I don't think anyone wants to listen to someone simply singing out of a diary. I've always been conscious of allowing people into the song, and not just bellowing my fucking woes at people constantly.

Something about that album is that it's very distinct. It's such a weird mix of very thought out and not thought out at all. There's a massive amount of gut instinct, but I can't at this point explain how it came together. A lot of it was flying by the seat of my pants.

Over the years, I've become almost embarrassed about how much I revealed on 'The Midnight Organ Fight' that the follow-up [2010's 'The Winter Of Mixed Drinks'] is purposefully less personal. What I then realised - and this applies going forward as well - is that I will never again be in the situation that I was in back then, when there was no audience, it was a really private thing, and just demoing in the bedroom and playing them to my friends. Now, it's not that at all. It's very public. But the goal is to try and at least channel a little bit of that gut instinct I was talking about, and to not be too studios about making albums. If something feels right, then maybe it's right. That's what this album proved.

Photos: Sarah Louise Bennett / DIY

Frightened Rabbit's 10th anniversary tour for 'The Midnight Organ Fight' continues tonight (15th March) in Manchester, before they play London (16th) and Glasgow (17th).

Read our Hall of Fame piece on the album here.

Tags: Frightened Rabbit, Features