I always think of a song being a very neat frame around quite a messy painting. | | | | "While I’m alive, I’ll make tiny changes to Earth": Frightened Rabbit's Scott Hutchison in Seattle, July 28, 2013.
(Suzi Pratt/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I always think of a song being a very neat frame around quite a messy painting.”
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| | rantnrave:// He had a great sense of humor. Sometimes it was morbid, sometimes self-deprecating, sometimes just a random in-the-moment observation. But for a guy whose calling card was sadness, depression and loneliness, he sure could be funny. I don't know enough about depression to tell you if that's unusual or clinically interesting or boringly normal, I just feel that it's an important thing to note about a singer-songwriter who was as good as anybody at communicating the smallest details of his most existential despair, including his suicidal reveries, and whose body was found last week two days after he tweeted "I'm away now. Thanks" and disappeared. Depression is a devastating disease. One of SCOTT HUTCHISON's many gifts was the openness and clarity with which he was able to write and sing about it in his band FRIGHTENED RABBIT. His music—guitar-based folk-rock with a soft center and jagged edges—could be dark, but it was catchy and it always sounded romantic, too. (I can hardly think of a more brutally romantic—and sad and maybe funny—opening to a breakup song than "I have a long list of tepid disappointments/It doesn’t mention you.") The songs were easy to fall in love with, and Hutchison attracted a hardcore following of fans who frequently saw a piece of themselves in them. Remembrance after remembrance posted over the past few days traces an unusually intimate connection between fan and artist. Fans who say a song saved their lives. Critics who became real-life friends. BROOKLYN VEGAN: "Thank you for getting me through some of the toughest times in my life and impacting the person that I am today." STEREOGUM: "Scott’s music got me through some things then, and then again years later, and again after that." VILLAGE VOICE: "one of the few musicians I felt like I could call a friend." On Frightened Rabbit's classic 2008 album THE MIDNIGHT ORGAN FIGHT, Hutchison famously—and now hauntingly—responds to a breakup by contemplating Scotland's RIVER FORTH before deciding, "I think I'll save suicide for another day." The band's final album, 2016's PAINTING OF A PANIC ATTACK, opens with a song called "DEATH DREAM." But for all that foreboding, he just as often sang, and talked, about finding a way forward, and celebrating the very fact that he was here. His songs, and his shows, were full of life. Repeat: Depression is a devasting disease. RIP to a beautiful singer-songwriter. The NATIONAL SUICIDE PREVENTION LIFELINE is available 24 hours a day at 800-273-8255... You don't need me to tell you about the importance of treating mental health, especially in an industry like music where decent health insurance can seem more a luxury than a given. Tweet of the week, from San Francisco indie label FATHER/DAUGHTER RECORDS... ANDRE 3000 re-emerges for Mother's Day... NETTA BARZILAI wins EUROVISION for ISRAEL... Publishing and royalty-collection platform SONGTRUST says it now represents 150,000 songwriters and more than 1 million copyrights. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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