Frightened Rabbit Announce New Single

Frightened Rabbit precede their 3rd full length studio album, ‘The Winter Of Mixed Drinks’ with a brand new single ‘Nothing Like You’ on February 22nd, backed with another new song, ‘Learned Your Name’.
Furiously upbeat, ‘Nothing Like You’ s acoustic bustle is reminescent of The Cure classic, ‘Inbetween Days’ and mines the most uptempo aspects of Scott Hutchison's songwriting. The new album follows on 1st March.

Frightened Rabbit’s steady ascent is set to rise incrementally with the release of the new album, appetite for which has been whetted by the anthemic ‘Swim Until You Can’t See Land’ teaser single which gave the band their first Zane Lowe plays and made a unaminous critcal impression at NME, Q (Track Of The Day), News Of The World (SotW), Record Of The Day (Track Of The Week), CMU Daily (Track Of The Day).

More tellingly they registered strongly in the albums of the decade polls everywhere from the blogs to NME and The Skinny

‘Nothing Like You’ typifies a more fully realised Frightened Rabbit sound, and like ‘Swim Until You Can’t See Land’ boasts a stunning string arrangment from labelmate, Hauschka. Speaking to nme.com about the new album, lead singer Scott Hutchison explained ‘We've broadened our horizons sonically and it feels like a natural move forward. Most importantly, it’s better than the last one. That's all I wanted, really."
Frightened Rabbit ended 2009 playing to huge crowds at Edinburgh’s Hogmanay celebration and 2010 will be a pivotal year for the band, as Scott acknowledges: “I’ve never been in a position of being aware of an audience of any size that was waiting for our music until now. You have to be aware of it or else it’s totally selfish. Pressure sounds like a negative thing but it’s quite positive actually. It feels earned. Everything we have achieved has been earned. It would be disappointing if we didn’t become more popular because that’s got to be the goal for every new record. If it comes I think we are actually ready for it now.’

The March headline dates run as follows, tickets available via www.crowdsurge.com/frightenedrabbit

04/03/10 York Duchess
05/03/10 Manchester Club Academy
06/03/10 Aldershot West End Centre
08/03/10 Bristol Thekla
09/03/10 Oxford Academy 2
10/03/10 London Koko
12/03/10 Birmingham Academy 2
13/03/10 Sheffield Leadmill 2
14/03/10 Norwich Arts Centre

I don't think I'm going out on too much of a limb to presume that there's Scottish dates to follow those.
You can have a wee listen to Nothing Like You (formerly known to some of you as Steve) now over at the Frightened Rabbit MySpace.
The single will be available as a 7" and download from Fat Cat.

What's Happening on Aye Tunes in 2010?

It's that time of the year when we move on from lists of stuff that was good last year to lists of stuff we won't do this year. I'm crap at giving things up (I'm typing this with a ciggie in my hand and a half drunk bottle of beer on my desk, so those two clearly aren't happening), so instead my only real resolution for 2010 is to find myself a job, since being out of work really puts a dent in your ability to buy things.

Anyway, here's what you can expect from the blog over the coming year.

Asides from Christmas week I managed to get myself along to at least one gig a week for the last five months of 2009 - and since the first couple of weeks of December had me at two gigs a week I think I'm allowed that one week off - despite being regularly skint. I'm planning on keeping that rate up as far as possible, so you regular gig goers can probably expect to see a lot of the wee ginger guy lurking around various venues in Glasgow over the course of the year. On thing I'd like to do is get over to Edinburgh more often, it's been ages since I got to a gig over there. That needs money though, so it'll have to be something quite spectacular to get me through at the moment I think.

Aye Tunes is a year and a half old this week. Only I'm not counting that whole first year, since it wasn't until a full year after launching I actually did anything of note round here. So in June we'll be celebrating the first birthday of Aye Tunes properly. There might even be a party or something.

At some point soon I'll try and do some kind of 10 tips for 2010 list, along with the rest of the music bloggers on the planet. It'll likely be quite familiar, as I think most of the ones I think are worth watching are bands that came to my attention in the last half of 2009 and have already had a wee bit of coverage here.

Record and gig reviews are likely to continue, and I do have a desire to add interviews into the mix too. Any volunteers?
I've fallen away from doing band profiles a bit, so I'll try and get more of those done this year too.

For better or worse I'm still going to try and focus on positives not negatives, so still no reviews slating things, unless I can be constructive about it. I will try and stop calling albums I like brilliant though, and attempt to balanced.

Thanks a lot to everyone that has visited over the past year. My stats show that most of you started coming round in September and October, I'm glad you got here and hope you keep coming back.

Oh, I did think of one resolution - keep up with my email. If you sent me something in December especially it pretty much hit my inbox and go stuck there. Feel free to give me a reminder if I've missed something.

Rambling over, for now.

We Sink Ships Radio Launch Gig

Still trying to drag myself out of the Christmas and New Year slump with regards to getting back to regular postings at the moment, bear with me.

Until I force myself to write something more, here's a plug for the gig I'm heading to on Friday.
The line up is The Second Hand Marching Band, Benni Hemm Hemm and Euan McMeeken (of The Kays Lavelle, but promising to play non-Kays material). Also beneath us, the waves DJing. If you click the poster above it should be more readable, but if you can't be bothered then the gig is at The 13th Note on Friday, kicks off at 9pm, and costs £4 to get in.

The gig is to celebrate the launch of the new We Sink Ships podcast on Radio Magnetic. The first podcast should be available some time today update, it's available now here, but in the meantime you can hear a teaser for it here. Head over to Radio Magnetic for full details on what you can expect from WSS Radio.

While on the subject of We Sink Ships I should really point out that their new (and quite gorgeous looking) website is now online at http://www.wesinkships.co.uk/, with two new exhibitions available for viewing.

I'm risking turning into a Second Hand Marching Band stalker, I've seen them quite a lot recently, but since they have been threatening to take a break from gigging for a while I may as well pack in as many as I can before they take a time out from playing live. Benni Hemm Hemm impressed me quite a bit last time round, and I'm interested to see what Euan gets up to on his own. See you at the bar then?