After recently returning from a US tour, Jon Fratelli is home in Glasgow anticipating his band’s approaching Japan and Australian string of dates. He’s also eager to get away from the gloomy Scottish weather.
Laughing off any suggestion that Scotland is a romantic landscape to those not from the country, Fratelli muses over why tourists frequent his city. “There must be something about here. I guess when you’re brought up somewhere you start to not notice.”
Unassuming observations like this litter the conversation with the lead singer of the Scottish group The Fratellis, who most may remember from their 2006 album Costello Music and their not-so-popular break-up/hiatus in 2009.
The wider music press is calling their most recent album We Need Medicine a ‘comeback’ of sorts. Even from over the phone, it’s easy to sense the frontman absent-mindedly shrugging his shoulders in reaction to such sentiment.
“To say I live in a bubble is an understatement. I completely keep away from almost all media, really. I watch the news, but other than that, I’m so far out of the loop – especially when it comes to The Fratellis.”
“I don’t sort of look at the online stuff ever. I don’t even want to read the good stuff, because I figure you can’t have it both ways,” he reasons.
Dancing, whether slow or with arms flailing, is more in the Fratellis way. Costello Music had the heavy drums of ‘Flathead’ and ‘Baby Fratelli’ mixed with the melancholy of ‘Whistle For the Choir.’ We Need Medicine has their same distinct sound, and as the artists explains, the more obvious rock n’ roll influences.
“I don’t sort of look at the online stuff ever. I don’t even want to read the good stuff, because I figure you can’t have it both ways”“When it comes to that thing of influences of the record, mine have never changed. My record collection hasn’t been updated since I got it. I guess the thing now is I’m long past covering up those influences, which was more possible before. They were always there, but they were possibly there. I think in the past I didn’t think I could give those influences free reign, whereas now I sort of don’t care.”
This attitude is also linked to a devotion to music genres that fans would no doubt have heard in The Fratellis sound from the beginning.
“I’m a traditionalist when it comes to music, when it comes to musical forms. It’s why when I start writing most songs I’ll try and do them in three chords. I’ll try and get as much out of those three chords as I can,” the Scottish singer reveals.
“At the same time, I still want to make it interesting for people to listen to. That’s the slight thing I have to be careful about. I have to think about it because I have to acknowledge that just because it pleases me, just because I’m hearing something I want to hear, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily what (everyone else) is going to want out of me. I’ve always kind of got that in the back of my mind. The way to stay connected to that feeling is to keep connected to, you know, where there is the excitement. Has the song got something that we can keep people engaged with?”
The Fratellis choose to use live shows to test whether their efforts are working or not.
“(Live shows) are the only place, because as I said, I’m not connected to the other side of things – only the intimate side of things. So the only way I can get that sort of information is live.”
“Before we recorded the album, we were into performing sort of half of the songs every night. Most of the time, a new song is the audience cue to go to the bathroom or the bar, and we noticed even then that people weren’t doing that. So we got an idea that what we were doing was working.”
“I’ve always just been attracted to the images that certain combinations of words conjure up”If the artist’s response to a question surrounding the origin of the album title is anything to go by, then it’s safe to assume that no literal meaning can always be drawn from the names of their releases.
“(We Need Medicine) was just written because it was a song on the record. So the title came from the title of a song. I tend to stay away from anything too obvious anyway. For me, I’ve always just been attracted to the images that certain combinations of words conjure up, you know? To me, ‘we need medicine’ conjured an image.”
“It’s never been necessary for me to have any meaning to anything. It’s not nihilism or anything (laughs). Rock n’ roll never had to mean anything other than it provokes a reaction. It’s all just to provoke a reaction.”
However, the lyrical content of the tracks, as well as the song titles and album covers, seem to veer towards uncovering the mythical creatures that are ‘women’. Recent song ‘She’s Not Gone Yet But She’s Leaving’ shows only a slight advancement in the understanding of the female species since 2006’s ‘Whistle For The Choir’, though both tracks are commendable for choosing to present women as equally evasive characters as male subjects.
The frontman listens carefully to this assessment before offering, “I definitely find (women) mysterious, which gives me a lot to write about I suppose. They’re all fictional, you know, all fiction.”
Maybe from the perspective of the music maker this could be true, but from the perspective of girls around the world who listen to The Fratellis’ songs and have a quiet dance, or remember doing so back in the early days of the band, moments like that are too full of old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll values to be fiction.
The Fratellis Australian Tour 2014
TICKETS ON SALE THURSDAY 27 FEBRUARY, 9AM LOCAL
THURSDAY 3 APRIL – BRISBANE, THE TIVOLI – 18+
www.ticketmaster.com.au
FRIDAY 4 APRIL – MELBOURNE, PRINCE OF WALES – 18+
www.oztix.com.au
SUNDAY 6 APRIL – SYDNEY, THE METRO – Licensed All Ages
www.ticketek.com.au
