The most unfortunate thing about Frightened Rabbit's new album is that there aren't any songs on it, not a single one, that packs the emotional punch of just thirty seconds of The Midnight Organ Fight. They all sound good, but that's all there is to them. On Organ Fight the lyrics carried a lot of weight and the music elevated that weight to even weightier levels (you know what I mean...) but on The Winter of Mixed Drinks the music bears all the weight and the lyrics are just kind of there.

Swim Until You Can't See Land, the song you've all heard by now I'm sure, is prime example of this. It's a pretty song, and it sounds good, but listen to it a couple times and try to tell me what it's about. You can't. You can guess, "Something, something, being a man is hard, wahh wahh," but what is that? The songs on Organ Fight each told a story, and they were all stories most of us could relate to or understand in some way. On Mixed Drinks there aren't any stories, just songs that are relatively meaningless.

Thankfully on the supposed Deluxe Edition (which I think exists only on torrent sites because even by Googling I couldn't find any mention of a deluxe edition anywhere else) there's this song, Fun Stuff which sounds and feels like it could have fit in just fine on Organ Fight. It's about sex, sorrow, and longing, the things Frightened Rabbit does best, and it's just... beautiful, in that "beautiful is synonymous with sad" sort of way. I love it. I just wish the album itself was this good.

At first you could say there is something sweet about this song. It's not that he's jealous, he just wants to protect her, keep her away from people with diseases and all that. He doesn't want her back, he knows that they don't work, but he still wants to kill whatever motherfucker is trying to bed her currently.

But as the song plays on (and any guy listening to this should get it way before he reveals it in the song) you learn he's lying. He's not protecting her, he's trying to possess her still, insisting he doesn't want her but all the while trying to guide her back into his good arms.

A guy on Songmeanings points out that it sounds like, from the lyrics, that he broke up with her ("I decided this decision some six months ago") and can't handle watching her move on. I didn't get that, though it makes perfect sense, so I am sharing it.

I dumped a girl who I still wanted once and it totally ruined the relationship. Also, everyone in the whole world can say "I can relate to wanting to kill someone else's partner," so I don't really need to say that.

P.S. This is a pretty song.