Live: Frightened Rabbit

6th November 2013

HMV Ritz

8/10

It’s been ten years since Frightened Rabbit began slowly gathering an audience for their unique brand of painfully earnest indie rock. In that time, frontman and founding member Scott Hutchison has seen the project grow from a low key solo affair to one of the most popular cult bands in the UK, winning over listeners and critics alike with a mix of witty, sincere lyrics and an expansive, guitar-heavy sound. With their latest release Pedestrian Verse finally bringing them some commercial recognition, their latest tour is seeing them play some of the biggest venues of their career, including Manchester’s HMV Ritz.

Focusing mainly on new tracks and cuts from their critically acclaimed 2008 album The Midnight Organ Fight, Frightened Rabbit’s nineteen song set proved that they’re a band that need to be heard live to be fully appreciated, with their iconic odes to frustration and failure sounding bigger and even more intense in a live setting. Opening with the propulsive anti-religion rocker ‘Holy’ followed by fan favourite ‘The Modern Leper’, the evening took on an almost celebratory tone, albeit one filled with dour subject matter; “this is one of the many songs you’ll hear tonight about wishing you were dead”, said Hutchinson of ‘Dead Now’. New tracks, including ‘The Woodpile’ and ‘The Oil Slick’, sounded tight and confident, whilst performances of well-worn songs such as ‘Old Old Fashioned’ and ‘My Backwards Walk’ were still as heartfelt as ever. The band then finished the night off in a sing-along fashion with live staples ‘Keep Yourself Warm’ and ‘The Loneliness and the Scream’.

With the band and crowd in good spirits throughout, the gig managed to keep the cosy and intimate feel that has been the characteristic of Frightened Rabbit’s live performances, despite the upgrade in venue size, which is just as well with songs as personal as theirs.