Recording information: Rare Book Room, Brooklyn, NY (11/2008-12/2008).
While White Rabbits are certainly not the first late-`00s band to marry percussion-happy world music to an indie rock mentality (see Vampire Weekend, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, et al.), few do it with such kitchen sink abandon as the Brooklyn band does on 2009's IT'S FRIGHTENING. "Lionesse," for example, opens Weill-sinister, builds into an electronic-indie loop with a mod-post-punk undercurrent, which within a minute gives way to a demented version of a Ben Folds riff, which in turn breaks into a maniacal mix of calliope drawl, sweet incantation, and noise, a descent into SGT. PEPPER'S-style madness. Indeed, a late-`60s Beatles spirit of experimentation within pop bounds thrives on an ever-morphing sophomore offering.
Professional Reviews
Rolling Stone (p.70) - 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "The only instruments that aren't slaves to the beat are Gregory Roberts and Stephen Patterson's vocals, which mingle into perfectly messy harmonies..."
Spin (p.101) - "[T]here's plenty to love about songs as lightly brooding and likably grabby as these."
Billboard (p.29) - "White Rabbits recruited Spoon frontman Britt Daniel to produce IT'S FRIGHTENING, an appealingly audacious move that reveals just how tightly these guys define their sound."
Pitchfork (Website) - "FRIGHTENING can be dark and cavernous when it wants to. Indeed, it's that Poe-ish sense of lonesome, luxurious dread threading through the record that separates it most starkly from NIGHTLY."
