Review: Frightened Rabbit at Union Transfer

The Scots sextet Frightened Rabbit, which played to a full house of the faithful at Union Transfer on Saturday night, started out as an anguished Scott Hutchison alone in a room with a guitar. And the songs on their 2008 breakthrough album, The Midnight Organ Fight, and its successor, The Winter of Mixed Drinks, stuck to that solitary perspective.

But the size of the band, and its ambitions, have grown along with its fan base, and now, Hutchison told the crowd, the band has a new purpose.

"We're just here to facilitate intercourse," Hutchison said Saturday. "Because someone should be having it."

Hutchison's confidence as a songwriter has increased, as has his willingness to share the load; Pedestrian Verse, the band's fourth album, is the first on which other members have helped write the music. With its dried-out synth drums, high-register bass and massed keyboard, "Backyard Skulls" went off in several complementary directions at once, sounding almost too big for the room it was in.

The increased scale of Frightened Rabbit's songs sometimes threatens the naive cast of Hutchison's lyrics. On songs like Organ Fight's "Modern Leper," his dramatic overreach plays as desperation: We've all felt like outcasts at our most self-pitying, no matter how foolish it may seem at a distance. But with the newer songs, it's harder to swallow clunkers like "You're acting so holy, when you know I'm full of holes."

Hutchison as much as acknowledged the disconnect between the obvious joy in his stage performance and his songs' dire outlook. By way of introducing "Poke," which asks, "Why won't our love keel over as it chokes on a bone," he prepped the crowd:

"I was talking about gentlmen having the chance to show their sensitive side. Even if you can't shed a tear, just flick some water on your face. Works for me. I'm faking it every... night."

Hutchison's tongue was planted firmly in cheek, but even so, the crowd grew quiet for an instant, just long enough for him to sense some frantic backpedaling was in order.

"I'm joking!" he said. "I'm joking!" But a hint of sarcasm crept back into his voice. "It still means a lot."