January 22, 2010

Album review: White Rabbits - It's Frightening (Mute)

Brooklyn's genre-interbreeding machine produces another corker

7 / 10 What do you get if you mix Bow Wow Wow’s ‘C30, C60, C90, Go’ with Cold War Kids? That’s a question Brooklyn’s White Rabbits are gonna have to get used to answering, having crossbred the two so successfully on ‘It’s Frightening’’s opener ‘Percussion Gun’. It’s not half as bad as you might think either, with singer Stephen Patterson gloriously losing his rag during each chorus. The rest of the album is a more sedate affair, from the off-kilter ‘They Done Wrong/We Done Wrong’ (which veers deep into Shins territory) to all-out weepy ballad ‘Leave It At The Door’. Twin drummers Matthew Clark and Jamie Levinson are oustanding, but it’s Patterson who’s the real star – an all-American frontman whose honey-coated voice is practically begging for adoration.

Matt Wilkinson

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Click here to get your copy of White Rabbits' 'It's Frightening' from the Rough Trade shop.