Frightened Rabbit, London Scala

April 15th 2009

It can be heartbreaking to go to a live gig and see songs that mean the world to you disinterestedly rushed through by the band that originally wrote them. Songwriters get tired of their own songs, they resent people preferring their lovely little three-minute pop ditty to their four hour long song-cycle about the Eastern European public transport system. To see something so dear to you be treated as lightweight, something to be rushed through before playing some tracks from the new album, as an inconvenience, especially by its own creator seems to invalidate our own opinions and leave us distrusting our judgement.

As one of the many people around the world with something of a large emotional investment in Frightened Rabbit, especially their album The Midnight Organ Fight (large is perhaps an understatement – if my emotions were money, I could probably contribute a large part of the G20’s bailout with that investment), I was thinking about this on the way to their live gig at the Scala. I quite liked their recent live album, but it somehow didn’t seem to pull quite the same strings, and it’s now a year since TMOF came out; what if they’re sick of it? What if they spend the whole gig plugging a new record? WHAT IF NOBODY LIKES ME?

Anyway, getting to the gig just on time, after missing the much-lauded support acts We Were Promised Jetpacks and Airship (I blame the Guinness, your honour), we managed to elbow our way into the centre of the floor with moments to spare before Frightened Rabbit took the stage, looking about as unglamorous as it’s possible to be, much more like music fans (and ones who probably knew the lyrics and alternative live lyrics to every b-side – they had obsessive fans’ beards) than the terrified leporids who had managed to worm their way into my consciousness like Russell Brand into a convent school.

It became clear about twenty seconds into the first song ‘I Feel Better’ that my initial worries were going to be unfounded; they played slower, less crystal-clear and more embattled than on their record, with singer Scott Hutchison seeming to ignore the melodies he had sung on the record itself in favour of whatever seemed most appropriate at the time, which generally meant wringing every extra drop of melancholy and resignation out of their already heartbreaking songbook. At times, especially in the most desolate songs it was almost painful to watch. Far from being a performer, it seemed the song was being dragged out of him; in hymn for the cheated-on ‘Good Arms Vs. Bad Arms,’ one could imagine the act was happening right in front of him, and the despair and absence of self-belief in his voice for the line “I might not want you back, but I want to kill him” was not pleasant to hear, at all.

Not that the gig was an utter blub-fest; the songs that were perhaps less intricately threaded with his psyche shone, especially ‘Floating in the Forth,’ which was prefaced with a (comparatively) jolly little anecdote about how he worried his mother by stating he was moving to Fife to write songs for the third album, when it would appear in the context of the song they were about to play that “moving to Fife” was a metaphor for suicide. I guess you had to be there. The band did their best to lift the atmosphere as well, with some incredibly muscular drumming and guitar that sounded like they wanted to slice through the walls of the venue and out into the King’s Cross darkness.

They played all the “proper” songs from TMOF, ‘The Greys’ and ‘Square 9′ from their “shite” first album (his words), so there were a fair amount of highlights to pick from, but the two songs they played for the encore probably topped it. After leaving the stage to huge cheering from what was the biggest crowd that had ever come to see them play (or does he say that to all the audiences, the flirt), Scott came on to play a solo acoustic version of ‘Poke’, and when I say acoustic, I mean acoustic. His guitar wasn’t plugged in, and he didn’t use a microphone, he just leaned forward off the stage and sung out, his voice and guitar carrying easily around the not inconsiderable room. It was one of those moments where everyone falls silent (they had to or they wouldn’t have heard it – clever thinking) and really, really listens. It was stunning.

But it wouldn’t have been a suitable way to end – the rest of the band came on, accompanied by the extra member with thick glasses who was apparently a favourite with the ladies, or at least the girl I was at the gig with (apparently being a speccy mandolin player is in this season) and managed to transform ‘Keep Yourself Warm’ from a desolate lament about loveless casual sex into a life-affirming tower of song that didn’t just fill the Scala, it could have leaked out and filled the Emirates as well. This was the only gig I’ve ever been to where I felt totally drained, not by pogoing around like a tool into thick walls of thug, but just from experiencing it, and if that sounds cheesy just pretend it’s being performed live by Frightened Rabbit; it could move you to tears.