Five years is a long time between albums. But for Scottish indie rockers The Fratellis, their third studio album, ‘We Need Medicine’, almost never made it.
After the success of their 2006 debut album, ‘Costello Music’, and sophomore record, ‘Here We Stand’, the band decided in 2009 it was time to call it quits for a while. “We broke up — hiatus is a nice way to put it, but we split up,” explains lead vocalist/ guitarist, Jon Fratelli. “At that time, the most natural thing in the world [was] to split up. It felt like there was really nothing else to do other than to stop … we really needed to not be in a band together, and that was the way it had to be. Even now looking back, I’m OK with it; it was completely the right thing to do at that time but similarly, it was completely the right thing to do to start again.”
Much to the joy of Fratellis fans, the band regrouped last year and recorded ‘We Need Medicine’, which Jon says came about as naturally as their decisions to break-up and reform. “There’s certain things about us that won’t ever change, it’d be impossible to change them, and you wouldn’t want to change them either. But the other side of that is certain things have to change, they just change on their own.”
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Despite Jon’s talk of change, their new album sees The Fratellis return to the punchy, jumped-up indie rock rhythms that made them such a popular band to begin with. “When it comes to songwriting, it’s only ever been about holding people’s attention … we trust in the songs that come out quickly. The ones that come about where you don’t have to work very hard for them are the ones I trust.
“When you play songs people haven’t heard before, that’s usually the cue to hit the bar or go to the bathroom, and we haven’t noticed that happen [when we play] and that’s usually a good sign … we haven’t had anything but positive [feedback] so I think we did what we set out to do with the album, which was to write a bunch of songs we could go out and play live.”
The FratellisTour Dates
Thur 3 Apr - The Tivoli (Bris)Fri 4 Apr - Prince Of Wales (Melb)
Sun 6 Apr - The Metro (Syd)
