Frightened Rabbit / Cabins

Andy J Ryan Apr 26, 2023

Frightened Rabbit - Beach Road Hotel, February 3, 2010

Lank and moody quartet Cabins provided the swirling soundtrack for a crowd unfortunately mostly concerned with taking interminable amounts of photos of themselves posing with their various combinations of friends, so their set flashed by. Then the room filled, and kept filling. Something special was brewing.

Frightened Rabbit took the stage and humbly greeted the crowd which returned the salutation with a raucous room-filling sweat-and beer drenched cheer and seemingly non-existent gaps were occupied with even more humanity. As over-awed as the band seemed that they had a brimming building full of audience halfway across the globe from their home, it was nothing compared to the overjoyed reaction that greeted them when they went out on a limb and kicked off with 'The Modern Leper'. The great bulk of the set comprised songs from the band's second album The Midnight Organ Fight, which itself is such a gripping and diverse batch of songs, which are ridiculously potent when presented live. Singer Scott Hutchison's Scottish tones just seem to convey the raw pain and suffering in the songs so well.

Perhaps the distance in both time and healing since their writing, and the effect of the euphoric crowd at their feet, sees even their most heart wrenching recording moments such as 'Good Arms vs. Bad Arms' and 'My Backwards Walk' covered with rowdy blasts of noise cloaking the lamenting lyrics. That's the beauty of the band, stark lyrical beauty set to runaway riffs and songs that on one hand can thrust and bubble or else just drop sharply away to reveal that beautiful rich brogue.

The recognisable riffs of 'Fast Blood' and 'I Feel Better' were both greeted with huge cheers and sing-alongs; the refrain of "It takes more than f**king someone you don't know to keep warm" was shouted and shared among strangers. Their enchanting new track 'Swim Until You Can't See Land' had people pondering a short dip down the road and it all just ended to soon. You suspect they won't be playing for free or in a venue this small next time. Simply terrific.