Frightened Rabbit Concert Review: October 29, The Paradise

Two Fridays past, I headed over to the Paradise Club to see Frightened Rabbit in Boston. It was a show that I had been eagerly awaiting for several weeks, and it did not disappoint. An added bonus to the evening was arriving in time to see the first of the two opening acts, The Phantom Band. Like Frightened Rabbit they hail from Scotland, and like their countrymen they are a predisposition toward pounding drums, and a swelling, layered musical orchestration, their songs complete with extensive instrumental intros. Definitely a group to keep an eye on moving forward, you can find more of their work on iTunes.

Any apprehension that Frightened Rabbit would not live up to my lofty hopes and expectations, the kind you always have for your favorite bands, was quelled shortly before the band took the stage. Speaking with a couple who had driven up from Philadelphia, I was pleased to learn that they had seen the group some two years ago, and that they had put on a remarkable show, and that I would almost certainly enjoy the evening. They were not wrong.

Taking the stage, lead singer/guitarist Scott Hutchinson and the band were all smiles and seemed excited to get underway, launching into “Things” from their most recent release The Winter of Mixed Drinks. Set against the heavy pulsing of ambient keyboards and crashing percussion, Hutchinson’s voice strained as he therapeutically sung of moving on, letting go, of boxing up an old life: “I didn’t need these things / I didn’t need them, oh / Pointless artifacts from a mediocre past / So I shed my clothes, I shed my flesh / Down to the bone, and burned the rest.” Bared emotions of fragility and uncertainty are never lacking from the Scottish quintet, and it was something to behold to see how well the group’s studio work translated to the live stage. For all the extravagantly dark overtones that Frightened Rabbit’s lyrics possess, make no mistake they are heartfelt and sincere. Hutchinson seemed at times Atlas with a guitar in hand, a weight only he can feel threatening to crush him unless he tensed and strained and fought the emotions threatening to flatten him.

2007’s The Midnight Organ Fight tells of a ruptured love and the darkness that follows, and The Winter of Mixed Drinks is its sequel in all but name. The tracks from both albums meshed well upon the stage, the band pulling from one album and then the other. It is clear that The Winter of Mixed Drinks is embedded with a determination to move forward, a knowledge that while life is still scarred by the painful fracture of an old relationship, that it is something of an accomplishment to be “doing alright” when looking back to the abyss of emotional ache from which you climbed. Questions of vulnerability continue to arise, as in “Yes, I Would” (“Well, what if I am never thrown that bone / And what if this tear in my side just pours, and pours, and pours”), background vocal harmonies paralleling the narrator’s inner turmoils and doubt. Unlike the atmosphere of defeatism that entwined the spirit of The Midnight Organ Fight, the staccato of guitar melding with the nervous steps forward during “The Wrestle” (“Bare those teeth to me please, man eater / You can see of all me naked with fear / This is the test I left land for”), and the emotions spit rapidly, dueling with riff of guitars and jarring pound of Grant Hutchinson on drums, the uplifting anthems of “Nothing Like You” and “Living in Colour” illustrate a distinct resolution of spirit. For all their rousing spirit and orchestration, both songs are still yet marked with an insecure gloat, and tinge of incomplete rejuvenation.

It was not simply the words Scott Hutchinson yearningly delivered into the microphone, but how the rest of the band fed off his emotions, equal parts elation and distress, that made the performance memorable. Perhaps the best demonstration of this symbiosis came during “I Feel Better,” off Midnight Organ Fight. Speaking to the crowd, Hutchinson delved into the background of the song, saying that he had gone to New York City, “to win a girl back, like you always do.” It was a trip that ultimately ended in failure, and writing this song was a means of coping. With bass guitar plodding rampantly, Hutchinson calls out, “I’ll stow away my greys, in a padlocked case, in a padlocked room / Only to be released when I sing all the songs I wrote about you / This is the last one that I’ll do.” It is a naive attempt to bring closure, locking one’s troubled feelings away. Cymbals crashing, an echo of vocal harmonies rising and falling in the background, reflecting Hutchinson’s struggle to find balance: “I feel better, and better, and worse, and then better / Than ever, than ever, than ever, than ever / I feel much better, and better, and worse, and then better / Than ever, than ever, than ever, than ever.” It was a song that lifted the crowd, and a song from which the emotions all other songs that Frightened Rabbit played that night could be drawn: the loss of love is a lonely struggle, and packing the emotional hurt, not matter how deeply, leads only to further torment. Inverting the first verse, the track closes with an illustration of sentiments that refuse to die: “I’ll stow away my greys, in a padlocked case, in a padlocked room / Only to be released when I see you walking round with someone new / This is the last song I’ll write about you.”

It’s hard not to believe Hutchinson, as he strains with those finals words in “I Feel Better,” but you come to find they simply are not true. All the songs Frightened Rabbit played that night, before and afterwards, from “Be Less Rude” of their debut album Sing The Greys to “Good Arms vs. Bad Arms” to “My Backwards Walk” to “The Loneliness and The Scream” are colored in one shade or another with Hutchinson’s past. Everything about the show reiterated to me why I was, and continue to be, so drawn to Frightened Rabbit’s music.

And one more video, just for luck, and just because The National's "Fake Empire" is partially covered...