Fratellis 'Costello Music' album

The rogues and romantics that inhabit Costello Music by Glasgow’s The Fratellis are you and me and everyone we’d fancy to meet for a drink and a dance. It’s the sound of handclaps and dropped beer bottle caps. It feels like the sing-a-longs you stumble upon in the back rooms of house parties. It’s the chase down hallways of guys and gals looking for each other, ending up with each other, and not quite knowing what to do with each other. It’s the feeling that right now is just fine and that tomorrow can wait another day.

“You’ve got to have your fun, haven’t ya?” is how singer/guitarist Jon Fratelli finally puts it.

That these three Fratellis met at a Scottish carnival where they operated fairground rides like “dodge ‘ems and cups” seems no small coincidence. Along with Barry (bass) and Mince (drums/backing vocals), they seem particularly proficient in the art of amusement.

Take a track like “Flathead” where wood blocks and acoustic guitars weave around Jon’s wry observations like, “Everybody knows you’re the one to call / When the girls get ugly round the back of the wall,” and then culminate in the rousing nonsensical call-to-arms chorus of “Bara bap bara ra ra ra / Bara bap bara ra ra ra.” Or on “Chelsea Dagger” where hoots and claps, snare and bass are all clamoring beneath another tale of another elusive gal: “Chelsea Chelsea I believe that when you’re dancing / Slowly sucking your sleeve / That all the boys get lonely after you leave.”

If you add Chelsea to the ladies portrayed on “Doginabag” and “For The Girl,” you begin to wonder what the ideal mate for a Fratelli might be: if she’s rich or poor, damaged or dangerous, evil or kind.

“I’m quite happy with the one I’ve got, so she must be the ideal one,” Jon says with a chuckle. “Some say the songs are about damaged women, somebody else said they were dangerous. They’re probably both. I also like the poor and the rich equally. I think in ‘Doginabag’—she may be rich. I suppose ‘For The Girl’ is just about a girl and a guy that probably love each other a lot but fucking hate each other just as much.

“Most of the songs seem to be little conversation pieces to me,” he continues. “They’re almost always a little conversation between two people. That’s the pleasure I get from writing them: I don’t have to analyze them.”

The thirteen songs on Costello Music were recorded in Los Angeles (with Beck producer Tony Hoffer), letting in a bit of California sunshine to pierce any lingering Glaswegian gloom. The album barely leaves room for a single un-fun thought, which might explain why The Who’s Pete Townshend recently sat in with them for a live version of “Got Ma Nuts From A Hippy” for Britain’s online show In the Attic. Townsend enthusiastically remarked, “I love the Fratellis! It was great to meet them and it was great to play with them.”

The Fratellis also enjoyed rapturous praise in the U.K. where Costello Music debuted at #2 (directly behind a certain Justin Timberlake), and the band brought home a Brit Award for Best Breakthrough Act. They’ve been compared to everyone from Oasis and Arctic Monkeys, to the Kinks and T. Rex, but both praise and comparison leaves the laid-back Jon Fratelli unfazed. Even the obligatory challenge of “conquering America” doesn’t seem to rattle the band’s down-to-earth perspective.

“These things have happened as quick or as slowly as they’ve needed to,” he says. “We don’t really dwell on it too much. We just let it happen the way it happens. We’re the same with America. If people like our gigs and they buy our records, then that’ll make us happy. We just don’t consider that when you’re playing in a rock and roll band that you should take it too seriously. That doesn’t mean we don’t take pride in it and that we don’t want it to sound as good as possible. It’s just our way of being. That’s all.”

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Fratellis - Costello Music