Frightened Rabbit - Swim Until You Can’t See Land

New material from a band is always welcome. When it’s from a band that released one of the finest debut albums of the last few years in 2007’s ‘Sing The Greys’, it’s even more welcome. Such is the case with Scottish five-piece Frightened Rabbit. Things are just starting to pick up for the band again ahead of the release of album three, ‘The Winter of Mixed Drinks’, due in March 2010.

The first cut from said record is the fantastic ‘Swim Until You Can’t See Land’. A subdued affair, for the most part, its lyrics tackle the subject of identity, its very title being quite an effective metaphor. The band have even said that it would have fit the theme of the album itself, for it concerns ‘an escape and maybe even a slight breakdown,’ in the words of vocalist Scott Hutchinson. The hook is an immediately gripping acoustic guitar line, but the song expands over the course of its four-and-a-half minutes, eventually becoming this huge wall of noise as its chorus is repeated: ‘Swim until you can’t see land / Are you a man? Are you a bag of sand?’

This bodes very well indeed for the album, which stands every chance of being spectacular. Up to the usual Frightened Rabbit standard, of course.