Registry of Lyrical Offenders: Frightened Rabbit – “My Backwards Walk”

Previously we spotlighted some dance-floor romance by the sour Scotsmen from Frightened Rabbit. The Midnight Organ Fight is still playing on repeat, but it has since come to our attention that singer Scott Hutchison has a strike on his rap sheet.

“My Backwards Walk” begins with a modest scene-setting of regret:

I’m working on my backwards walk
Walking with no shoes or socks
And the time rewinds to the end of May
I wish we’d never met then met today

So far, so good. Hutchison pens some admirable post-breakup verses, lamenting memories that won’t fade and warbling plaintively through “drinking to forget” lines. He just wants closure, or, to quote Charlie Nicholson (Catherine Zeta-Jones) in High Fidelity, he’s going through “one of those what-does-it-all-mean stages.”

I’m working hard on walking out
Shoes keep sticking to the ground
My clothes won’t let me close the door
These trousers seem to love your floor

Clothes/close is an underused rhyme, but the magnetic attraction between pants and floor is truly a new spin on the breakup-sex trope. Unlike the more typical variety (“you’re no good for me but I’ll stay”), Hutchison clearly gets only misery from his prolonged exit. Rather than describe the passion and mixed emotions keeping him around, all he can think about is his pants, crumpled in a heap. You get the feeling they’re still around his ankles, while he just stares down at them, choked in shame.

We’re almost in the clear — get in, get out; sad song, nice wordplay — when Hutchison tries to kick it up to another level of epicness.

You’re the shit and I’m knee-deep in it

Oops. Imagining an ex-lover as a pile of feces (at least two feet high, by our calculations) is awkward enough, but Hutchison slips up seriously with “you’re the shit.” It’s unclear whether he meant this, but in grade school, being “the shit” was like being “the bomb” or “all that.” Occasionally, with a bag of chips. That saying may not exist in Scotland — this is the part of the world where fries are “chips” and chips are “crisps,” and soccer is “football” and Bruce Springsteen is “U2.” But next time, dude, run your lyrics by an American buddy or something. Or just stop watching Saved by the Bell reruns.

MP3: Frightened Rabbit – “My Backwards Walk”

Frightened Rabbit and Romance on The Midnight Organ Fight

Much of the subject matter Frightened Rabbit’s record The Midnight Organ Fight involves breakups, failed love, and self-loathing, like any good album from a group of bitter Scots. (Note the brazen sexual metaphor of the phrase “organ fight.”) “The Twist” is one of the record’s sweetest sour notes, as singer Scott Hutchison braids his usual fermenting outlook with romantic wonder.

The song starts on a stifling dance floor, moisture gathering on the dancers’ arms and upper lips. “Lift your dress enough to show me those shins / Let your hair stick to your forehead,” Hutchison sings, and it sounds like a filthy line lifted out of a David Banner song, then passed through Belle and Sebastian’s tweeification machine. All he’s asking for is a glimpse of lower leg; he doesn’t even mind the mussed-up bangs.

Did you blush then when our hips touched?
I can’t tell, you’re already red
Am I right? You give me the signs
Is that pink mist or just lit dry ice

With this pair of questions, Hutchison backs away from the girl even further, like a flirting schoolboy caught peeking across the room. Meanwhile the “pink mist” is a bit of romantic fancy, even a little My Little Pony. It’s all the more surprising considering Hutchison’s usual malaise — this is a guy who, in the song “Poke,” wonders, “Should we kick its cunt in and watch as it dies from bleeding?”

By the end of the song, he’s finally introduced himself (“I’m David, please”), though he doesn’t mind if she gets the name wrong. As the dancing builds, the song twirls away with the refrain, a plea hanging in the air: “I need human heat.”

MP3: Frightened Rabbit – “The Twist”