Live: Fryars

6th February

Gorilla

4/10

You can always tell how good a support act is if they can make people at the bar shut up and listen. When people are slowly sucked into an unknown performance, it is truly inspiring to see such a magnetic pull unfold. However, Fryars were completely unable to hush the drone from the back of the room.

Fryars’ set consisted pretty much entirely of dreamy, piano-driven, electro pop ballads. Admittedly, they were musically pleasant to the ears, yet the lyrics were totally cliché. Not to the point of being laughable, but just bland. Prime examples include “Baby, you’re a rock star!” as well as several choruses worth of “I can’t stop loving you,” repeated over and over. No matter how much the music tried to draw you in, the hit-and-miss lyrics were always there to draw you right back out again.

The music itself had its moments to shine. Songs such as ‘In My Arms’ impressed with psychedelic guitar work, as well as almost jazz style drumming. The closer, ‘Cool Like Me’, was the best song of the set, finally getting the right balance between Fryars’ lyrical style and his mellow sound. However, these moments were interrupted by far too similar ballads. The same tedious lyrics set to the same slow chords sequences. Playing these tracks straight after genuinely engaging songs made the whole set seem jarring. As the noise from the bar became louder and louder, the few people listening were left thinking “What happened?”

Overall, Fryars’ often frustrating set was neither good nor bad—just dull.