It’s never cool to generalise, but when someone mentions the phrase ‘Scottish indie band’ words like grim, curmudgeonly and bleak leap to mind. You’ve got professional miserabilists Arab Strap, wordy melancholics Idlewild and dourness personified in the Jesus and Mary Chain. Granted you’ve got Belle & Sebastian and Primal Scream too, but the former’s chirpy music is complemented by lyrics ridden with unrequited love and the latter only made happy music when they were snorting everything they could get their hands on. In a break from this fine tradition though, Selkirk’s Frightened Rabbit are actually reasonably chipper in their sound and are full of smiles when they take the stage in the top room at the O2 Academy.

Touring in support of third album, The Winter of Mixed Drinks, the band seem in a relaxed mood, playing mostly new stuff, but dipping back into earlier material as well, to the great approval of the crowd who seem to know all lyrics by heart. In fact during the band’s encore, singer Scott Hutchinson can afford to ditch his microphone entirely and just be backed by a huge choral effort on the mournful Poke. Influences are spattered everywhere in Frightened Rabbit, there’s the earnestness of early Neil Young on Fast Blood, a wistful edge that captures the Cure in their lighter moments on Swim Until You Can’t See Land and some more rollicking moments like Springsteen when he’s in a stadium rocking mood on Living In Colour. The new tracks seem more poppy than the older material which seems lo-fi by comparison, more designed for the back rooms of the pubs than the venues Frightened Rabbit have every right to expect to be filling now.

With the recent success of bands like the Gaslight Anthem and Band of Horses, Frightened Rabbit’s more considered sound and hopeful lyrics should see them playing bigger spaces than this in the coming months.