Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchinson, live somewhere else.

Frightened Rabbit
Revolution, April 23

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Upon taking the mic on Friday at Revolution, Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchinson told the crowd, “I’ve got four words for you: Fuck the fucking volcano.” The vast, shoulder-to-shoulder audience roared in response. Understandably disgruntled, after having missed their Coachella date and their sold-out show in Dallas, the Scotsmen debuted their current stateside tour right here in Little Rock, to a proud, thunderous welcome from a sea of plaid shirts.

Yes, Hutchinson’s vocals sound uncannily at times like Adam Duritz. Yes, their music, with its harmless and easily chantable refrains, and friendly, melodic song structures is digestible “serious dude” music for today’s college sophomores, the way that R.E.M. might have been, or Counting Crows themselves, circa 1993. There were traces of Johnny Marr in the lush guitarwork, which served to echo another bygone college-loved band. Frightened Rabbit is a supergroup-style master of its swoon-y, self-serious demographic.

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There is something to be said for the energy of their show, the band’s upbeat, half-victorious anthems so lyrically uncomplex nu-fratdaddys can effortlessly throw #1 fingers in the air and dutifully shout every chorus. There should have been another encore. Everybody loved them. It was almost like life imitating art—if by “art” you mean a primetime drama on the CW network where the weekly favorite anodyne band shows up in the montage at the end of the episode, and everyone is conventionally good-looking, automatically sings all the words and apologizes to their girlfriends in just the right way. It felt exactly like that. And that felt pretty nice.

Natalie Elliott

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