Frightened Rabbit’s 2008 masterpiece The Midnight Organ Fight hasn’t become indie canon like other records from that year like Fleet Foxes or Deerhunter’s Microcastle, but it’s become untouchable because it’s the kind of album people connected too. It’s a breakup album and it’s the kind where you can hang on to and obsess over every word if it hits you at the right time in your life. It’s probably the only reason Frightened Rabbit can play the massive Terminal 5 eight years later. When you write an album like that, the expectations for a followup are often tough to reach, and Frightened Rabbit missed the ball by a mile when they followed it with (what is still) their worst record, The Winter of Mixed Drinks. That album put a pretty major damper on their career, but more recently they’ve been quietly establishing themselves as a band with serious longevity. 2013’s Pedestrian Verse was a lot better than expected and it’s still kinda underrated, and the same can be said for singer Scott Hutchison’s 2014 solo album as Owl John.
Painting of a Panic Attack continues this trend. They may never capture the magic of The Midnight Organ Fight again, but Panic Attack has plenty of their best qualities in fine form: anthemic, atmospheric songs, depressing lyrics, and the unmistakable voice of Scott Hutchison.
The album’s bookended by two of its best songs, opener “Death Dream” with its repeated middle section of “you died in your sleep last night” (double meaning presumably intended), and acoustic closer “Die Like A Rich Boy” where Scott suggests “I want to die like a rich boy diving in a hydrocodone dream / You can die like a rich girl by me, oh how the magazines will read.” And after revealing more of the fantasy (“I want to die like a rich boy drowning in a lake that bears my name”), he concludes, “I want to die like a rich boy, even if we’re as poor as we are now.” It’s a Frightened Rabbit sentiment if there ever was one.
The Fat Angel Sings 