Monkton: Swim Until You Can't See Land

Re - Plankton: Happy Birthday

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the aquatic microbe is right! Oh how we were condemned as fools for imagining this day would ever come! Today Monkton vs Plankton is one year old! Consider all naysayers well and truly smoted. But truth be told, smoting is not our forte - in fact we’re rather fond of saying nice things about nice things - and so in the vein of free love I give you the upcoming new single from Frightened Rabbit, making like a rabbit in torchlight in their spanking new video:

One of 2008’s most beloved, most belogged records, The Midnight Organ Fight was already gracing the year’s hit-lists when MvP was but a glint in the milkman’s eye (long story) - so we might see their new single as a well earned dose of nostalgia, a salute to the kind of melody making that got us blogging in the first place. And dare I say there is something sweetly nostalgic about ‘Swim Until You Can’t See Land’? A retrospective tribute to TMOF’s phenomenal success maybe - the album who’s spirited take on paranoia and self-reproach became so widely celebrated, feverishly shared for the chiming ring of its visceral anthems and stirring interiority. It’s this collective call to arms that marks a change in tone - Hutchison even seamlessly slips from the singular ‘I’ to the second-person inclusive ‘you’ in the chorus - “So I swim until you can’t see land / Swim until you can’t see land” - repeated like a mantra for the troubled minds of a stiflingly self-reflexive generation. No one ever quite heals in this game, but the sharing of personal aches pains has a formidable affect - positivity glows through the song’s rippling guitar and swaying choir, regimenting the otherwise brooding subject matter, ceremoniously dispossessed. I can’t help recall the moment Frightened Rabbit first slipped into the deep blue -

MP3: ‘Floating in the Forth’ - Frightened Rabbit

“I’ll float away down the forth into the sea, I steer myself through chopping waves”

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The great Wikipedia in the sky tells me that we’re not due another album until 2010, so this is one to savour for a wee while and a hint of things to come. Preorder the single here and if you’ve gotify le Spotify you can listen to The Midnight Organ Fight here. Happy Daylight Savings Day!

Monkton x