"I know there's pressure for you to keep up with the times," smiles always dry and self-deprecating Scott Hutchison. "Fuck what your mates in Hackney are listening to - you're watching Frightened Rabbit in a church."
That we are, and you can't help but feel that the crowd are far more in the true spirit for 'Old Old Fashioned' tonight, when the room essentially becomes one moving mass of celebration. That said, it's by no means a fair reflection of F'Rabbit in 2016. "I was questioning if we ourselves were becoming retro," Hutchison told us of the difficulties the band faced before recording their immaculate new album, Painting Of A Panic Attack. While in the past, shades of their sound may have coloured them a little on the folkier side, they've never fully immersed themselves in that world.
Arriving on stage to the pure atmosphere that opens 'Get Out', it soon erupts into another anthem of ache - but with a more complete and refined edge that only peaks when it needs to. Not that there's anything wrong with the contrary. 'Holy' makes for the perfect festival spectacle. You wouldn't call it pop, but F'Rabbit have always known their way around a tune, and tonight is a showcase that don't have to take the direct route. The songs can breathe as you fully absorb the journey.
'Woke Up Hurting' is the perfect example of this - it simmers and sears rather than explodes, artfully exposing Frightened Rabbit's raw-nerved devastation. 'I Wish I Was Sober', 'Break' and 'Lump Street' too, they brim with that elegiac charm that's bafflingly infectious, but they demand to be heard and grip the crowd tonight because the songs are in control of themselves, rather than bursting into bluster.
The rest of the set explores the other avenues of all that F'Rabbit do best. 'Living In Colour' and 'The Modern Leper' inspire a manic reaction while travelling through pain to find comfort in sound, there's a post-rock propulsion to 'The Oil Slick' and the space contained within 'Things' is pretty overwhelming. They do need more credit for the sonic territory they've covered.
The evening peaks when Hutchison takes to the pulpit to open a triumphant outing of 'Keep Yourself Warm'. "It's a fucking ridiculous song anyway," he told us of his plans before the show, but it emphasises two things: the sheer scale of F'Rabbit's powers, and their ability to pull at the thread of everyday torture and heartache and turn it into something so fearless and accidentally universal. A church full of followers arm in arm howling back "IT TAKES MORE THAN FUCKING SOMEONE YOU DON'T KNOW TO KEEP WARM' is a memory that will endure.
As we holler the vocal refrain of 'The Loneliness And The Scream' well into the evening, we already pine for their return. It's impossible to not be entirely arrested by Frightened Rabbit in their current form. They've never been 'retro', never been twee, never been fucking Mumford & Sons. Free of gimmickry, you can only ever call them 'Frightened Rabbit'. It's an emotional landscape, an arc of heartache, recovery, hangovers and often brutal honesty. They are their own place and time, and Painting Of A Panic Attack is their essence made manifest, and tonight is the realisation of everything we've wanted them to be.
Frightened Rabbit played:
Get Out
Holy
The Modern Leper
Woke Up Hurting
I Wish I Was Sober
Living in Colour
Head Rolls Off
Things
Break
Fast Blood
FootShooter
Lump Street
The Oil Slick
Nothing Like You
Old Old Fashioned
Keep Yourself Warm
Encore:
Die Like A Rich Boy (Scott solo)
The Woodpile
The Loneliness and the Scream
Check out our Frightened Rabbit takeover below:
- Scott talking us through his favourite music, books and TV (including a desire to go on Bake Off)
- Scott's magnificent track-by-track review of Painting Of A Panic Attack
- Drummer and brother Grant gave us his guide to the finest pubs for a pint in Glasgow
