White Rabbits - It's Frightening

Label: TBD Records Release date: 19/05/09 White Rabbits Official Site It’s a hard moral road – indie rockers White Rabbits made an enjoyable enough album with sophomore effort It’s Frightening, but it sounds so much like producer Britt Daniel. Not just the vocal enunciation, the entire band ends up sounding like Spoon. While Spoon is a great band, a personal favorite even, White Rabbits cannot be that band. And it’s that resemblance that just taints their second album, which would and could be hugely unique. Lyrically, the band have moved forward quite a bit, and musically it’s the same chord changes as expected from the group in opener ‘Percussion Gun.’ But then ‘Rudie Falis’ starts – that hard upright piano striking away, the thundering drums (and heavy ambience), hell the vocal delivery sounds just like some outtake from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. ‘They Done Wrong/We Done Wrong’ only furthers the problem, and by the time you get to the end, it’s like listening to a bunch of slightly altered (at best) or quickly abandoned (at worst) songs from Daniel and company. Enough complaining, I liked It’s Frightening, primarily because I liked White Rabbits from their debut album, Fort Nightly. The sound and influence from Britt Daniel is such an obvious part of the album that sometimes it’s really nice to sit back and think it’s a new Spoon song. It isn’t the band that changed - it’s their ethos regarding their sound, but I’ll chalk it up to Daniel’s hand guiding the sound primarily. I can also chalk up the slight mediocrity to the famed sophomore slump, so with a heavy heart I rate lower than I want. Rating: 6/10