I don’t obsess about music the way I once did. I blame that on the digital music revolution. As much as I love having access to a seemingly endless stream of music, it also means I don’t live with an album for weeks at a time the way I once did. But there are exceptions to that, certainly, whether it’s a Pearl Jam or Clash week or when I do fall in love with a record and listen to it beyond its first week of release.1

And then there’s the lone recent band that I listen to with only occasional pauses: Frightened Rabbit. Man, do I love those guys. After finally putting their most recent album Pedestrian Verse aside for a bit over the summer, I’ve been listening to it once again in recent weeks.

And then Stereogum decided to include FR in the “Ten Best Songs” feature, where a writer breaks down an artist’s career and then lays out a list of their ten finest pieces. Which did a number on my brain. Between listening to songs and watching videos, I listened to, ohhh, two million FR songs last night. OK, that’s a slight exaggeration, but I listened to a lot.

I had a mental list similar to this in the spring. I think I put it together one night while we were on spring break and I couldn’t sleep because of the nasty cold I came down with. I never shared it; I feared that even with my efforts to sell the band to my readers it would still be too esoteric. But many of my favorites appear on the Stereogum list. “The Modern Leper” is one of my favorite songs ever, but “Head Rolls Off” is a terrific song and the line about making tiny changes to earth was one that resonated with me in the days before L. was born. My favorite song of 2010, “Footshooter,” is here, as is my 11th favorite song of last year, “State Hospital”. My favorite song of this year might be on this list, although there are several FR songs in the running, a couple strong contenders by other acts, and we still have new Pearl Jam and Arcade Fire albums ahead of us.

Anyway, if you’ve always wondered what it is about the band that I love so much, this is a fine list of songs to sample and hear for yourself.

The 10 Best Frightened Rabbit Songs
 

 

  1. I feel like I’ve written this paragraph a dozen times over the past ten years. My apologies if it’s really been that often. ↩