The Fratellis - Costello Music
(2006)

Review by Lisa Dib

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My most recent CD purchase was...difficult to say the least. Knowing my shifts at 'ShitMart' were being rapidly cut, I would be able to afford my carefree days of emptying my bank account into a JB HiFi cash register no longer. I was faced with my worst and most treacherous nemesis: a budget.

Mournfully, I left others behind ("Don't worry, I'm coming back for you soon, Pop Levi!") , but fate is bittersweet: I left with one of this year's best albums.

"Costello Music" is the debut album from The Fratellis, a UK (seemingly) indie band that you probably know best as the men behind the music of the latest iTunes ad - or a promo for Hughesy and Kate on Nova radio (*gag reflex*).

Aaaaaanyway - I, me, myself found the lads late one night on Rage ( when Creepin' Up The Backstairs popped on my televisual system) bursting loudly and unashamedly OUT from between the muddles of electro mess and hairy Swedish death metal.

Well, I fell desperately in love with the song, and subsequently, the band, right there. Their funky breed of clappy-singalong indie gets your head bopping and nodding all of it's own accord, like a mosh pit in your skull.

The band keep their indie-pop roots and do wonders with them, but thankfully venture into other fields; they have well-placed moments of jazzy ska (you don't wanna dance, but they make you! They violate your legs with music! In a good way!), doo-wop R'n'B (that's Rhythm and Blues, folks, the ACTUAL rnb...not Ashanti), and a brief venture into Psychadelic Town via axe/voiceman Jon Fratelli's mad guitar skills.

Call me crazy, but singer Jon reminds yours truly of what Syd Barrett might have become had he been born in a different timezone.

His brand of out-and-out psychadelic acid tunes being unable to survive in this day and age, he'd have had to create a hybird band, where he could mix all his far out ideas together...and he would have changed his name to Jon Fratelli. Jon's hoarse yet eerie tone shape-shifts so easily between songs or even different vibes of a single song, that you'd wanna pat him on the back if you weren't too busy dancing your arse off.

You'll probably find yourself, like me, listening to this spectacular debut and thinking:

"Who do these guys sound like? Oh, it's annoying me now, who who who do they sound like?".

You won't be able to pinpoint it, and you'll be kind of annoyed and it'll probably niggle at you for a while, BUT, such is the pleasure of The Fratellis; different enough to become special, but familiar enough not to be alienating and scary. Like putting boiled cabbage on your toast in the morning instead of Nutella.

Ewww.

ALBUM RATING: 4.5 out of 5

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