Frightened Rabbit like to keep busy. Before they released their wonderful fourth album Pedestrian Verse last February, they put out five new songs on the State Hospital EP, and since then, there’s been a good flow of new material coming. An album’s worth of new material has come from tracks that didn’t make their major-label debut, and the much-deserved re-release of lead single The Woodpile adds three more tracks to the FR canon. The album track opens the new EP, its images of social anxiety and escapist fantasies (“So will you come back to my corner? Spent too long alone tonight”) contrasting with the well-developed and spacious sound the quintet – Scott Hutchison, Grant Hutchison, Andy Monaghan, Billy Kennedy and Gordon Skene – pursued for their fourth full-length, opening proceedings in a vibrant fashion that paves way for the new tracks. The first of these, ‘Default Blues’, combines a delicate acoustic lead with typically powerful drumming from Grant, as well as electronic textures and programmed drums cropping up in the second verse. It’s another example of the band pushing their sound forward in subtle ways; it could also be seen as a sister song to the lead track, with similar themes popping up in Scott’s lyrics (“The past may die, but it’s never gone – what are you running from?”). Escape of a different kind is also the focus of the lyric in the upbeat ‘Radio Silence’, its chiming guitars and powerful rock feel masking the turmoil that lurks underneath: “It’s been too long since you’ve turned that cheek; one last kiss on a faceless street, then radio silence.” Fans of the band will know that relationships – Scott’s own, and other people’s, both personal and romantic – are fertile lyrical ground for the frontman, and just as one of this EP’s songs deals with the conflict that such things can bring, the four-track affair’s delicate closer ‘Candlelit’ takes the idea of doing anything to get the attention of the one you love (“I’m ready to wage a gut-wrenched war for a minute of your time”) and gives it a typically dark twist. Its chorus is particularly inspired: “I’m done playing stone, paper scissors / Gonna take that stone and bring ‘em all down with it / Steal those scissors and cut some throats / Put pen to the paper and write you a note.” Despite its big sound, it’s a stripped-back way to close an EP that’s made up of four radically different songs and is a testament to Frightened Rabbit’s versatility. When their b-sides are as good – and sometimes even better – than the albums they were left off, it’s clear that they’re doing something right.