Seeing Frightened Rabbit was, for me, something like trying to rekindle a romance that never really got off the ground. I remember hearing a lot of them when Sing the Greys came out in 2006 (and again in 2007), and thinking this was a band I needed to check out. And then, what? They fell off my radar for a good three years. In that time they released Midnight Organ Flight to pretty-damn-considerable claim, and toured all over the place, somehow always evading my probing-the-weekly-for-killer-shows eye. It’s almost like the cute girl in science class who you finally get assigned as a lab partner, charm her with your self-deprecating and slightly nerdy brand of humor, and then she moves out of the district the next week. So when the opportunity arose, finally, to see these guys live – and in light of some seriously premature-ejaculatory-toned plugs coming from a certain other publication’s music staff – I skipped out on my prior engagements and headed over to Berbati’s to check out the Scottish lads up close and personal.
There’s certainly something to be appreciated about early shows on school nights, and even more about shows that actually start on time, but when I rolled up to the front door of Berbati’s at 8:05 pm and could hear the music already blasting from inside, I was almost annoyed at the punctuality of it all. 8pm is awfully early for me to be getting my rock on, school night or otherwise. Onstage was Our Brother the Native, a still youngish collective that got its start in 2005 as nothing more than a few teenagers swapping tunes over MySpace, a la Postal Service but without all that indie cred to back it up. I’d read some less-than-glowing reviews of these guys, and listened to a bit of pretty okay music from them, but came away totally impressed with their live show. They weren’t particularly charismatic – vocalist Josh Bertram occasionally mumbled vague sentiments about how much fun the tour had been while he fiddled with the knobs on his sampling equipment – but their performance managed to be dynamic, catchy, and more than a little off-kilter all at once, combining glitchy experimentalism with an almost Roger McGuinn-esque brand of jangly pop music. Plus they had a dude on his knees playing a toy xylophone. Bonus points.
Following Our Brother the Native and a delightfully short intermission, I was treated to Chicago mathsters Maps & Atlases, the second pretty good band of the night. From the side of the stage, their sound suffered a little more than that of the other bands, particularly under the strain of Dave Davison’s incredibly variable vocal style, but all in all they put together an engaging set in spite of that minor handicap. I would have happily covered the price of admission for a bill consisting of just these two bands.
And then, the band that I had so eagerly been waiting for, that I’d been frantically and excitably listening to trying to imagine – just imagine! – the amazing live show that they were going to stage with this material. Boy, was I disappointed. To continue with the earlier analogy, it was as if you bumped into the cute girl from science class at the checkout line years later, only to find that she’s now a frazzled looking soccer mom with a dated haircut and a tea party bumper sticker. Or that she’s traded in her Smiths records and married the popped-collar jock that used to shove you into the lockers when you walked by. Or maybe I should skip the analogy and just come out and say, at the risk of sounding like the elitist music snob that I quite possibly am, that the “adult contemporary” radio format would fit these guys like a glove. Tough, tough realization to come to. The theory of cognitive dissonance holds that, having been so excited about this show in advance, I should have, subconsciously, devised some kind of blowhard logic to either convince myself that the performance was good, or that there is a valid reason why it wasn't. Alas, it doesn’t seem to have worked. I’m just baffled as all hell why these guys are supposed to be so exciting. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that this performance is exactly what I would expect to see from a bunch of accountants and lawyers who play classic rock covers at bars on Saturday nights just to keep in touch with their youth. As I made my way through the crowd toward the exit, I dejectedly took note of the people around me. The crowd was older than usual, and the prevalence of golf hats and dad jeans (you know, the kind that come just to the top of your built-for-comfort-not-fashion white tennis shoes) was rather more notable than I am accustomed to. Snob, I know. But I guess the point is, disappointed as I was, maybe I’m not qualified to say that Frightened Rabbit wasn’t very good. Maybe I’m just not the demographic, or my expectations were too high or way off base. Or, maybe, that’s just what you get when you romanticize something that you never quite got to know. Maybe, after all, that cute girl in science class never owned any Smiths records to begin with.