Review by Colm O’Neill
Photos by Alessio Michelini
While Frightened Rabbit are not exactly U2 in the lentgh of time they’ve been around, compared to a lot of the acts, some still promoting a debut album, who have headlined the Academy Main Stage this year, they do have a couple of notches under their belt. They have already played this venue once before, although it was the far smaller Academy 2 stage located downstairs, they graced last time around. The place is jam-packed tonight, a sign things are moving onwards and upwards for the Scottish five-piece.
Starting of as a solo project by main songwriter/vocalist Scott Hutchinson at the turn of the century, FR have swelled to a band over the years to fill out the sound Hutchinson felt was needed to do justice to the songs he was writing. It was their sophomore effort The Midnight Organ Flight that carried them over the struggling line and into the bigger venues. Tonight the show begins with latest album opener, Things. The song is a hazy, fuzzy, slow building intro to the nights proceedings. Once were off, the show seems to revolve mainly around TMOF. Personally, the highlights are both taken from that album, A rousing Modern Leper has the crowd in hysterics, every syllable being screamed back at the band word for word, I Feel Better given a ramshackle loose performance.
While on record, Hutchinson voice is what holds everything together, I can’t help but feel slightly let down with how it sounds tonight. It may have been the acoustics, it may have been the equipment, it may have been where I was standing, but on more than one occasi9on, he seems to get swallowed up by the song. For the finally, Hutchinson plays a solo version of Poke, solo in the sense that the rest of the band have left the stage, and solo in the sense that all amlifiers and mikes have been plugged out. It a brave thing to attempt and he makes a good fist at it, but having seen it been done many times before, far more successfully, again it just didn’t quite hit the nail on the head. When he leaves the stage for the last time to an ear shattering applause, the songs OooO OO OO chorus is carried on by those in attendance for a good 5 or 6 minutes before it dawns that the show is indeed over.
I did enjoy the show, and when they come back I’ll deffo pop along again, but only because I feel that tonight, I just didn’t quite catch FR at their full potential!
