The Midnight Organ Fight

Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight
Critic Score
Based on 18 reviews
2008 Ratings: #31 / 806
Year End Rank: #46
User Score
Based on 185 ratings
2008 Rank: #30
Liked by 26 people
April 14, 2008 / Release Date
LP / Format
FatCat, Pod / Label
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CRITIC REVIEWS

93
The Line of Best Fit

The lyrical angst and musical euphoria are combined to create a shining place where you can both wallow in pain and also rise through it to a happier more resolved state.

91
A.V. Club
It's Hutchison's utterly believable desperation and frank lyrics that push the whole thing from good to great.
90
Drowned in Sound
Here there can be no snobbish derision and calls of 'selling out' or playing to the average man; in creating an album showcasing the very best of the band’s talents they have created one so perfectly fit for, as Scott so vividly puts, “the soft, soft static” of popular radio.
90
Sputnikmusic

On The Midnight Organ Fight, Frightened Rabbit succeed in mixing indie rock and traces of folk into 48 minutes of driven and emotional melodies that lift you up, beat you down and eventually bring closure. It's thoughtful but not self-involved, accessible but by no means generic, and brilliantly energetic but not without its more tender moments.

90
AllMusic

Even the album's lone non-breakup song, the propulsive, theism-baiting "Head Rolls Off" ("Jesus is just a Spanish boy's name/How come one man got so much fame?) manages to feel like it's trying to pick a fight and buy you a drink at the same time, a notion that pretty much sums up the remarkably beautiful and brazen Midnight Organ Fight to a T.

81
Pitchfork

On the surface, Scottish trio Frightened Rabbit are like a lot of other bands. You could file them away with other musicians from their Glasgow scene, or other bassist-free groups, or other bands of literal brothers (frontman Scott and drummer Grant Hutchison are siblings). But somehow, despite the fact that their methods are well-worn, their product is one-of-a-kind, as their consistently great second album (in under a y

ear, no less!) attests.

80
Paste
The album is singularly focused yet emotionally visceral, refining and sharpening the band’s rousing sprawl.
80
Tiny Mix Tapes
This is the least fashionable album I have heard in ages, and all the better for it.
80
The Skinny
The Midnight Organ Fight will be the catalyst for a wider appreciation of yet another great Scottish band. It's an album that invokes a range of emotions but generally leaves you exhilarated; enough, in Frightened Rabbit's unique idiom, to make the fast blood hurricane through you.
80
Mojo
What might sound like a depressing work of angsty indulgence is in fact an uplifting record of angular alt-folk.
80
Q Magazine

Midnight Organ Fight more than delivers on its promise: tons of spiky energy, proper tunes and a real lyrical bite to the likes of The Modern Leper.

80
The Irish Times
Accessible, guitar-driven indie doesn't get much better.
70
SPIN

Amid such scene-upending sentiments, his band’s all-too- Glaswegian moniker represents a clever case of bait and switch.

70
Under the Radar

There's a lot of beauty in The Midnight Organ Fight, but there’s a bit of bloat as well.

70
PopMatters

The Midnight Organ Fight is cleaner, more polished, and establishes that the group is indeed maturing, but thankfully not losing themselves.

70
Slant Magazine
Hutchison and his bandmates reward patience as well as repeated listens, and they deserve credit for unearthing a unique chunk of the Scottish heart, raised on equal parts American punk and traditional folk and bleeding beautifully.
60
Uncut
The world-view is challenging and heart-felt, the playing deft, the conviction clear.
Lucmun
90

I can still remember the day that we received the news of Scott Hutchison's passing. It tore me up in a way no celebrity death had ever done before and whenever I listen to this record in particular it still does. This is a shattered, broken, needy record and yet there's so much perseverance and hope underneath its ripped and tattered layers.

"I think I'll save suicide for another year...."

This record has one of the most gut-churning foreshadowings in indie-folk but it's a ... read more

ZeroTaste
87

Good.

Yo
100

amazing

JanEspinosa
90

So so good. What a record.

Musoman321
100

Masterpiece

jesscamwill
90

yikes!

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