In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well—some inspired by a weekly theme and some not, but always songs worth hearing.
How was your New Year’s Eve reverie? Did you gather with friends and family to toast the year that was and the year that’s coming, optimistic about the next 12 months? Or were you stuck at a bar in the “perfumed armpit of town,” standing “boring and bored,” wearily rubbing your eyes while leaning against a wall? If it’s the latter, Frightened Rabbit has a song that should well sum up your feelings: “Fuck This Place.” Scotland’s finest chroniclers of regret, booze, and booze-fueled regret recorded the song for a 2011 tour EP, and it’s an appropriately mournful track that perfectly captures the feeling of standing in a bar, intensely disliking the people around you, and wondering what the hell you’re doing there. Camera Obscura’s Tracyanne Campbell provides a nice assist in the vocals, as her voice combines with Scott Hutchison’s to sing “At the end, at the close / would you be good enough to take me home?” It sounds triumphantly melancholic as they repeat that last line over keyboards and horns as the song ends. Too bad “Fuck This Place” isn’t on Frightened Rabbit’s excellent upcoming album, Pedestrian Verse, out February 5. Oh well, that’s a shoo-in for our 2013 best-of list either way.