White Rabbits at Emo's Jr.
Rock ’n’ roll is mercurial by nature, which isn’t always a bad thing: It means that the evolution from novelty to ubiquity to barely remembered curiosity is life-of-a-mayfly brief, but it also means that the evolution from callowness to maturity can happen with staggering speed, like a time-lapse montage of flowers in bloom. When Brooklyn-by-way-of-Missouri band White Rabbits last came through Austin, it was genial and green, a batch of fresh-faced tyros still developing its uniquely calypso-fied take on the rollicking, sepia-toned indie plied by The Walkmen. Its members wore jaunty hats and askew ties in a nod to their ska roots, but came off like teens in dad’s old clothes. Its debut, Fort Nightly, was steeped in Fitzgerald-esque visions of uptown New York—all dinner parties and twinkling chandeliers—that could only come from rubes who hadn’t yet been broken by the city. Some listeners were pulling for the Rabbits to make it, but couldn’t help wondering if faster animals might soon take them down.
But the year-plus in between has been spent in fast-forward—first a high-profile tour with Spoon, then a whirlwind session in the studio with that band’s Britt Daniel at the helm. In that interim, as Darwin would elucidate, White Rabbits learned how to survive. They've learned to be a leaner, more savage beast. No surprise for a band with several drummers, the band’s secret weapon has always been its rhythmic attack—perfectly summed up on the new It’s Frightening by the song title “Percussion Gun”—and Sunday’s show was built on the backs of drums beaten into submission by two or three people at a time, creating a factory-floor clangor that was pure Industrial Age brio, and heralding the development of White Rabbits as a force to be reckoned with. Not long ago, White Rabbits shuffled. Now it swaggers.
Vocalist-pianist Stephen Patterson is the group’s other most defining factor, and he too seems to have been hardened. The contrast between Fort Nightly tracks like “While We Go Dancing”—with its multiple glissandos and Joe Jackson politeness—and newer songs like “Rudie Fails” is day and one particularly long, cold shoulder-filled night, with Patterson borrowing heavily from Britt Daniel’s cocky, laconic growl and leaning into his 88 keys with the same brusque efficiency.
The band as a whole seems to have absorbed via osmosis Daniel’s forceful way with economy—no mean feat considering it’s overflowing with guitars, pianos, harmonizing vocalists, and what felt like 10 floor toms—and even outside the studio and Daniel’s watchful gaze, it’s learned to translate that laser-guided minimalism forcefully in its live show. Even ostensible “bathroom break” moments like the acoustic-guitar-driven, mid-album nod “Company I Keep” revealed hidden fangs with a just-south-of-unhinged surprise guitar solo in its coda, while early favorite “The Plot” (which, odd as it sounds, has already become “classic White Rabbits” in light of all that’s left behind) got its own shot of adrenaline, as Patterson and fellow vocalist Greg Roberts delivered its sing-along chorus with the kind of shout-y urgency that comes from a group dead set on no longer being ignored. That shouldn’t be a problem much longer: Evolution has a way of taking care of such things.
