Review

This mainly acoustic live album was recorded last year in Frightened Rabbit’s adopted home city of Glasgow, capturing the band in the intimate surrounds of the Captain’s Rest pub. It’s not your average live album, though, as it consists of a full run-through of latest album The Midnight Organ Fight, in order, save for the two short instrumentals. You have to wonder, then, what the point of it is. Frightened Rabbit are a superb live band, infusing their songs with passion and power, but stripping them down to an acoustic setting rarely adds anything of note. And why not mix up the setlist with songs from debut Sing The Greys? On the plus side, everything is flawlessly played, the arrangements – folkier but not radically different – are enjoyable, and the excellent songwriting and lyricism shine through good and true with the honesty of the performances, but then they do that anyway on the proper album. Unsurprisingly, the quieter songs fare best, and ‘My Backwards Walk’ and ‘Old Old Fashioned’ in particular are arguably an improvement on the originals, but they are in the minority. It’s a nice document for the band and the lucky few that were there, but speaking as a fan, it’s not likely to get nearly as many spins as the source album. Chris Jones

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

DOWNLOAD: ‘MY BACKWARDS WALK’, ‘KEEP YOURSELF WARM’, ‘OLD OLD FASHIONED’.
FOR FANS OF: FRIGHTENED RABBIT, THE TWILIGHT SAD, ROBYN G SHIELS.

Posted on: 27th January 2010

---