The Fratellis Concert Review

Date: February 27th, 2014
Venue: Venue, Vancouver (WORST NAME FOR A BAR EVER)
Opener: Fever the Ghost

I'll start this review by saying that I am by no means a fan of The Fratellis. I knew their big songs like "Flathead" and "Chelsea Dagger," but that was about it. However, a combination of curiosity and friends got me in the door last night.

We got there about halfway through Fever the Ghost's set. THANK GOD. From what I heard, that was possibly the worst band I've ever seen live. It was just blaring noise with no emotion or anything. The reverb on the vocals was cranked all the way up, making whatever terrible string of words the singer was moaning totally incomprehensible. Talk about trying too hard! It was a relief to see their set end. The drummer rocked though; he should find a new band because there's little hope for that one...

The Fratellis jumped on stage right at 10 pm, and played what felt like a pretty long set ending around midnight with a four song encore. The crowd was rowdy and a sloppy mosh formed relatively quickly, but resembled some odd sort of off-time wrestling match instead of an actually fun mosh. It's clear the band has been playing together for a long time now (obviously). The set was super tight, but because of this, incredibly boring. There was no life in what they were playing. It felt like they were just putting in their shift on stage, and moving onto the next show. Basically every song dropped into a similarly paced quasi rock-a-billy march and droned on for a few minutes before ending. Lead singer Jon might mumble a few words into the mic between songs, which really added to the droning effect. YAWN.

The thing that really symbolized the night for me: the drummer wore sweatpants. C'mon really? Maybe I should have borrowed them to have a nap in...

So overall nothing especially WRONG with the show, just a bit lifeless and bland.

PS. I got the setlist but gave it away as it wasn't worthy of my wall.

Hate away :)