I met up with Frightened Rabbit’s drummer Grant Hutchinson, brother of lead singer Scott. We talk new albums, drunken festivals, steroids and dinosaurs.
What have you been up to lately?
We’ve finished recording the new album, we did it in Wales in a studio called Mono-Valley. That was in May, and it’s getting mixed right now for the next few weeks.
Are you happy with how it’s gone?
Yeah really happy, we feel confident that it’s the best one we’ve done, and by quite a way as well we think. It was different this time, we all got involved a lot earlier in the process. Previously, Scott would take the songs up to a certain level and did all the instrumentation and things. Whereas this time he still wrote the songs and the lyrics, but he’d bring them to us a lot earlier so we managed to get our own parts in the end. It sounds more complete, like a band!
It must be a nice feeling having the album nearly done, and now doing a load of gigs, rather than the other way round and having it loaming over you?
Yeah definitely, it’s been a long time coming so it feels good to have it done. It’s going to be another few months before it’s out, which will be a little bit frustrating!
Is the sound at all different from previous albums?
It’s different because of the fact that everyone’s got their own parts – you can hear Andy, Gordon and Bill’s different styles of playing coming across in the record. It’s not as standard – in the last record we just piled loads and loads of layers on. This time it’s more planned out. It’s definitely different.
A lot of thought has gone into it?
Yes, there has been a lot more preparation before going into the studio this time.
You’re playing a set at Truck festival today, are you looking forward to it?
Yes definitely. We’ve been looking forward to it for a while and have only heard positive things about it. It’s quite a short set, festivals aren’t the place to showcase too much new stuff, people are usually quite drunk at festivals and want to hear the songs they can sing along to!
A lot of festivals have dress up themes (like Truck and Bestival). What would you dress up as?
Well I dressed up as a lion once, that was pretty crap!
I have a penguin costume, and I quite like dinosaurs.
Are dinosaurs an animal?
Yeah, an extinct one…! (I notice Grant’s chemical formula tattoo)What’s your tattoo of?
It’s the steroid in my eczema cream. Yep. To be honest, I did just google it, so it could be wrong. No-one’s said that it’s wrong yet. Everyone always thinks it’s gonna be something cool.
Ecstasy, alcohol!
Yeah, or LSD!
Haha, it’s cool, thanks for your time!
For more information, visit Frightened Rabbit’s webpage here. Their fourth studio album is the first that Scott Hutchison has not written all the songs alone. It is expected to be released in early 2013.
