Practising a careful balance of space, detail and emotional warmth, Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington-based outfit French for Rabbits have been crafting understated yet powerful dream pop for over a decade now. Originating as a collaboration between songwriter and producer Brooke Singer and guitarist John Fitzgerald, the band slowly expanded to include multi-instrumentalists Ben Lemi and Penelope Esplin alongside drummer Hikurangi Schaverien-Kaa, with their sound gradually growing along with them.
This past summer, the band recorded new EP In the End I Won’t Be Coming Home, and invited Auckland’s The Black Quartet to add strings to the tracks. The result elevated the French for Rabbits style to some of its most vivid and dramatic forms to date. We previewed the release with single ‘Leech‘ back in October. “An exploration of ‘the push and pull of love’ suffused with ethereal harmonies and a soaring atmosphere,” as we described. “At once epic and fragile, the lingering melancholy burning away to reveal the rousing chorus.” An array of details both subtle and stark coalescing into something forthright.
What emerges is a perfect marriage of the early and later French for Rabbits sensibilities, where rustic charm and elegant polish can coexist. Songs like ‘Baring Head’ typify this style, a sonic representation of rugged coastline which sounds windswept and isolated and inviting all at once. The natural landscape in all its ambiguity, welcoming and uncaring and all the more mysterious for it.
The title track is perhaps the clearest example of this style. An epic five minutes which swoops over vast distances, a bird’s eye view of tenderness and violence and that strange place between the two. “When the fog has lifted all will be revealed,” Singer offers. “Like a gem formed through the pressure of the years / Or a bomb blast, car crash, landslide, nose dive / Losing my balance between happiness and fear.” But true to the French for Rabbits style, in probing into this ambiguity they emerge with a growing conviction, and the cathartic brightness of the closing refrain
In the end I won’t be coming home
Through the rocks and all the burnt out fields
Through the mist, a shot, a frozen gun
In the hands of her…In the end I won’t be coming home
Through the frozen fields
In the end I won’t be coming home
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In the End I Won’t Be Coming Home is out now via AllGood Absolute Alternative Records and available from the French for Rabbits Bandcamp page.
