White Rabbits bring a down-to-earth Midwestern ethic to their emotive sophomore album.
The cover of White Rabbits’ sophomore album, It’s Frightening, shows a band member shifting manically and blurrily between keyboards and percussion, and that’s a fairly accurate graphic representation of the sound that emanates from the disc behind the image. The same shot would have been every bit as appropriate for the band’s 2007 debut, Fort Nightly, where keyboardist/vocalist Stephen Patterson and dual drummers Matthew Clark and Jamie Levinson dominated the proceedings.
But then, Fort Nightly’s almost schizophrenic range of genres would’ve had to have been represented as well; the keyboardist/percussionist needed to be switching hats as well as instruments. After Fort Nightly’s wild mood swings between ska, cinematic samba, punk pop tropicalia and lightly sugared prog, the band felt a desire to narrow in on a more definitive sound with It’s Frightening.
“I would say we wanted to focus things a little bit more, maybe even just because I feel like perhaps we outgrew a few of the elements we tried to incorporate on the last record,” says White Rabbits guitarist Alex Even. “It was a bit more of honing in on the sorts of sounds and influences we wanted to shape. We probably put a bit more thought into that this time around.”
No one’s ever gone too far wrong using the Beatles as a pattern but in the White Rabbits’ case, they used the Fab Four’s work as a structual blueprint rather than a direct musical influence.
“We wanted to make (It’s Frightening) a bit more economical and to see how streamlined we could make it,” says Even. “We wanted to shoot for an album that sounded cohesive and was also tight and economical and kind of like ten pop singles, basically. So we looked to Revolver for that.”
While Even admits that White Rabbits’ actual musical influences are “all over the map,” there’s no denying that It’s Frightening is substantially more directional and focused than Fort Nightly’s genre hopping, mix-tape-by-one-band approach. At the same time, It’s Frightening still manages to exhibit a fairly dynamic range.
“It was different for every song,” says Even. “We all have ADD. Maybe we’ve just gotten better at hiding it.”
The process of getting started on It’s Frightening began after the Brooklyn-via-Missouri sextet (Even, Patterson, Clark, Levinson, vocalist/guitarist Gregory Roberts and former bassist Adam Russell, since replaced by Brian Betancourt) had been touring Fort Nightly for a year and a half. After that much road time, the band had certainly become more intuitive musically, which came in handy after initial discussions about tone and musical direction took place.
“It had been a long time since we had gotten together and thought about what it is we wanted to accomplish,” says Even. “In the beginning, you talk a lot and there are a lot of false starts, but eventually you come together. I can’t say there was one overriding musical influence that was driving everybody; there were smaller ideas that we wanted to push. It just kind of happened. It was kind of organic in that sense.”
One interesting aspect of It’s Frightening is the way its dark, moody pop atmosphere unintentionally, but perfectly, mirrors the late night hours in which it was created.
“Most of it was written at night; we generally worked from 8:00 pm to 5:00 or 6:00 am,” says Even. “There’s a lot of nobody-else-awake-in-the-city claustrophobia going on in the record. We were working really hard to try and finish it, so we would stay up all night doing it. Maybe that comes through.”
A big departure for White Rabbits between their two albums is the speed with which It’s Frightening was realized. The prolonged process of Fort Nightly yielded great results but it wasn’t something the band had any interest in repeating.
“We did everything quickly and there was a focus on really trying to get everything to sound spontaneous and fresh,” says Even. “I feel like on our last record, we got caught up in details and portions of the record suffered because of that.”
Perhaps one of the most significant differences between Fort Nightly and It’s Frightening is the presence of Spoon frontman Britt Daniel in the production chair, Daniel’s first assignment behind the glass for a band other than his own. Oddly enough, the pairing might never have happened if not for Levinson’s haste in sending a text message.
“White Rabbits toured with Spoon last year and we had met Britt at shows before that,” recalls Even. “We were playing in Portland one night and we were trying to decide if we wanted a producer for our next record, if we wanted to produce it ourselves, if we do want a producer, who would it be, and somebody threw out that it would be fun to work with another musician as opposed to a producer type. Jamie was sending a text message to what he thought was his friend Benjamin about us thinking about using Britt but he actually sent that message to Britt himself. That’s how Britt found out we were thinking about using him as a producer. A few weeks later, he was like, ‘Yeah, it’s a really good idea. We should do it.’ It was pretty surreal.”
One of the qualities that White Rabbits has maintained across both albums is an expansive, evocative, almost cinematic vibe. It’s clearly not something the band actively pursues in songwriting; while it was brought up in a good number of Fort Nightly’s overwhelmingly positive reviews, it’s not necessarily part of the band’s repertoire by design.
“It’s not something I can really explain; it never sounds overly cinematic to me, but other people tell me it does. It’s hard for me,” says Even with a laugh. “We just kind of write whatever sounds good to us at the time, whatever that may be.”
If White Rabbits seems to be disaffected by their relative success, it may well be a combination of their Midwest roots and their youth. All of the band’s members hail from the St. Louis/central Missouri area and met in college; four years ago, they formed White Rabbits and relocated to New York. For a young band with little history, White Rabbits has an amazingly mature sound and straightforward outlook.
“Columbia, Missouri is a college town - it’s the location of the University of Missouri - so the population of young people there is pretty transient,” says Even. “We were graduating from school and anxious to leave the Midwest, so we decided to move to New York.”
When Even reflects on the changes that have occurred within the White Rabbits camp over the past four years, he doesn’t think in lofty terms of musical evolution or emotional growth. His explanation is every bit as concise and linear as the band’s decision to relocate to one of the biggest cities in the world, the place where they met their future manager by sneaking onto the bill for their first New York gig.
“We have played shows all over the world and we’ve been on TV so our parents think we‘re successful,” says Even. “You gotta keep them happy.”
--Brian Baker
