The Fratellis at the Newport in Columbus, OH

When I showed up at 8:15 I didn't notice anything was amiss. The stream of people coming into the venue was steady, it sounded like the openers were just getting started and when I peeked into the auditorium I could see that the place was nearly full. It wasn't until I was about to walk in that I asked Al, the tour manager for Dappled Cities, when they would be going on. What he told me colored me red with embarrassment as he informed me that they had gone on at 7 and that The Switches were just finishing up. Apparently doors opened at an astonishingly early 6PM (unheard of if you've got any experience with the Newport and their notoriously delayed shows), with such an early start time, that meant the Fratellis were due to finish up at 10:10, home at 10:30. Is this rock n' roll?

Well, the full house certainly thought so. As the trio from Glasgow stepped onstage in front of a sold out crowd of High Schoolers, chaperoning parents, drunk college kids, and the rest of the rabid fans who had come to hear "Flathead" and "Chelsea Daggers". By the end of the show they would all be happy with the performance, which was at best electrifying and at worst drearily slow, but in the end it was solid, efficient, yet ultimately a bit of a lifeless set from a young band winding down a grueling year of constant touring. You could tell that Jon Lawler was telling the truth when he intimated that the songs were less exciting to play after so long on the road.

The show opened with one of the many note-for-note recreations of "Costello Music", this one of "Baby Fratelli". The other songs barely strayed from their recorded counterparts, outside of a brief extended intro and a random noodling guitar solo tacked onto the end of a song. The other minor changes were the several Ritalin fueled renditions of tracks like "Got Ma Nuts From a Hippy" and "Henrietta" played in about 2 minutes flat. I mean, come on guys, just because you can play a song fast doesn't make it better when you do. And I understand that there's a deadline and you want everyone to get home in time to see Futurama or the Evening News, but still, speeding up a song does not necessarily improve it (punk covers of Simon & Garfunkel excepted).

Despite the rather pedestrian renditions of the tracks that have been scorching the charts at CD101 for the past several months, on the whole, the crowd clearly enjoyed it, as evidenced by the bat-shit crazy reaction to the hit, "Flathead". I had forgotten what the pit at The Newport looked like when the entire place was full to the gills with sweaty bodies, and it looks kinda like this. I was a little concerned for all the "young uns" at this all-ages show, but aside from a lost flip-flop and some failed crowd-surfing attempts, the pit was reasonably contained. I didn't see any fist-fights or all out moshing, but the seething, writhing mess was clearly hell for some of those involved (although, I can't say they didn't deserve it). By the end of the short show, The Fratellis had played a new song or two (one for sure), rocked Columbus for a solid hour, played a three song encore, and left us all a bit sweatier than we were at 6PM (or 8:15 as the case may be).

Check back tomorrow for some pictures of the show and hopefully some videos (if YouTube cooperates!)

The Fratellis Official Site
The Fratellis on WikiPedia
Buy "Costello Music" from Amazon.com

"Baby Fratelli" The Fratellis