Live action shots from Edinburgh by Andrew McKenna
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
“I could just die right now and that’d be fine,” declares an overly-ecstatic Scott Hutchison following opening song ‘This Modern Leper’. Clearly taken aback by what goes before his band, every sentence muttered by the Selkirk lad is met with a deafening response by an adoring capacity audience.
The band runs through a hatful of songs from second album Midnight Organ Fight, with an additional four new songs providing a much sough-after taster of the upcoming album. Highlights include the accompaniment of Ross Clark onstage for a stellar ‘Old Old Fashioned’, the beautiful ‘Good Arms vs. Bad Arms’ and the oddly warming ‘My Backwards Walk’, in which 300-odd people whale with pride: “you’re the shit and I’m knee deep in it.”
The glimpse of new material on display this evening was enough to suggest that Frightened Rabbit’s masculine insecurity and alt.folk beauty has progressed incredibly. Steve (as it was aptly-titled for the evening) was akin to an Idlewild/early-Snow Patrol conversion, while Swim (Until You Can’t See Land) has the traits of the aforementioned Midnight Organ Fight progression, with intelligent vocal harmonies and a charming, ever-so-catchy drum beat.
Scott returns on his lonesome for a solo and (literally) unplugged performance of Poke, during which the crowd takes over on vocal duties in what is an overwhelming moment for the singer. “It’s the Queen’s fucking Hall, man,” he says in a final moment of bashfulness. Yes, it is. And it’s only going to get better from here, ’Frabbit. Outstanding.
- Malcolm Middleton - 28 November 2009
- Frightend Rabbit / Meursault / The Moth and the Mirror - 31 August 2009
- We Were Promised Jetpacks - 24 June 2009