Still Listening: Frightened Rabbit’s Painting Of A Panic Attack

Written In Reverb

Reverb is what happens when sound doesn’t end - it lingers.

It bounces off walls, fills the silence and leaves something behind. It’s what gives music its space, ache, emotions and haunting beauty.

Written in Reverb is a personal column about the records that stay. It’s about how music resonates through memory and time, how it latches on and leaves a mark. Call it one sided reviews, reflections - emotional archaeology. I’ve seen heartfelt tributes to Kurt Cobain, Chester Bennington, Chris Cornell and Taylor Hawkins pour out on social media in last few month, but Im not entirely part of that pain, but I can relate.

Vol. 1 - Still Listening

A love letter to Frightened Rabbit’s Painting of a Panic Attack (2016)

Dear you,

You are a ghost I return to, not to be haunted - but to be held.

I don’t listen to you every day anymore. You are too close, too raw. But when I need you, you’re not a record - you are a refuge.

You are the bruise I press just to feel something, the breath that doesn’t ask to be steady. I play you loud when I need someone to sit in the dark with me and not ask for the lights to be turned on.

There is something sacred about a voice still echoing long after the mouth has closed forever. And your voice - Scott’s voice still splits me open - softly, completely. This record is not just music. It is Scott’s breath held too long. A carcass of ache, a diary written in invisible ink that appears only when the tears come.

You found me when I was broken. A silhouette drawn in trembling lines, living behind glass and sleep and polite silence. And you didn’t knock. You bled through the seams of the door and sat with me in the trembling.

I press play now like it’s a seance, like conjuring. And for fifty-five minutes - you live again. The fog rolls in. And I swear I can feel you walking beside me just out of reach.

'Death Dream' was the first prayer I ever heard that began with silence and still ended in love.

'Get Out' thrashed and shimmered like a desperate pulse, as if trying to outrun the weight you already knew would win. A panic spell disguised as a pop song, all fight-or-flight in glittering tones.

'I Wish I Was Sober' is a confession I still flinch to sing along to. How many nights did that one sit beside me when I couldn’t meet my own eyes? Too close. Like you peeled yourself open, so we’d stop pretending we were fine. You sang like a hand on the back of my neck, like salt on the rim of a glass I couldn’t lift, like someone who’s survived the fall, but still dreams of it nightly.

'Still Want to be Here' gives me hope, but a different kind now - I think of it too often. And I love you for your wreckage. For the way you dressed despair in beauty and let the grief be luminous, glowing. You let the night stay night, but you lit candles in the corners of it.

'400 Bones' still feels like a lullaby for the unloved, 'Lump Street' as anger set to melody.

'Die Like a Rich Boy' - you saved it for the end, didn’t you? That tender, terrible ending. Not with a scream, but with a dream. A wish, a little white lie to leave us with. 

This was your last goodbye, though none of us knew it. Not really.

Used with permission from @staringintoacloud

When Scott disappeared, when the world went quiet and the search began. You, the record played in the background like a premonition. We were all still holding out hope, but the lyrics had already written what we didn’t want to say out loud.

All across the world, people who had never met each other were refreshing Twitter, checking forums, listening again to ‘Keep Yourself Warm’ and ‘I Still Want to Be Here’, watching maps of the Firth of Forth like they were heart monitors. We were a global vigil, a silent, aching hope.

“Please be alright.” “Please let this not be what it feels like.”.

And after the news came, your songs changed shape. They didn’t break. They just opened wider. Like grief does. It wasn’t just the loss of a musician. It was the loss of someone who had named pain for so many of us, who translated loneliness into something we could carry, something we could sing. His songs were a lifeline. And suddenly it felt like that lifeline had been severed.

'Die Like a Rich Boy' became unbearable and beautiful. A lullaby for someone who didn’t make it, but left a blueprint for surviving anyway. 

You didn’t leave us empty - you left us everything. You gave pain a home with soft hued wallpaper. You gave it a view and pictured in frames. And in return, we loved you - maybe too late, maybe not enough, but wholly. 

You aren’t just a record. You are a language. A time capsule of someone who understood what it was to be human in all its collapsing forms.

And then the silence after.  It still rings.

Even now, when my hands shake less and my days have names again - I carry your echoes like keepsakes. I kiss your scars like they were mine.

You are the love letter we never got to send back. So here’s mine now.

I miss you.

I carry you.

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Frightened Rabbit’s Painting of a Panic Attack