SCOTTISH rock band The Fratellis will be headlining a Dublin show at the Academy on Monday, December 3.
The band is back with their fifth album ‘In Your Own Sweet Time’ after once again teaming up with six-time Grammy and Mercury-nominated American producer Tony Hoffer (Beck, The Kooks, M83, Belle & Sebastian).
Hoffer previously collaborated on smash-hit ‘Costello Music’, an album that lasted 83 weeks in the charts, won The Fratellis a Brit Award in 2007 for ‘Best Emerging Artists’, and launched them to stratospheric critical and commercial heights.
Four albums and innumerable world tours later, and The Fratellis still sell-out shows from China (where the band played this summer) to Russia (a hotspot on the tour prior to 2015’s Eyes Wide, Tongue Tied) through to heartland America.
However, The Fratellis are a band that refuse to rest on their laurels.
In Your Own Sweet Time marks a development into a thrillingly chameleonic new phase, identified by a daring new sound that is bigger, bolder, and yet still shot through with a whip-smart, pitch-black sense of humour we have come to expect from the irrepressible Glaswegian trio.
Listeners can expect their first tantalising taste of what’s in store with first single ‘Stand Up Tragedy’.
Showcasing vibrant lyrical dexterity and foot-tapping, spine-tingling rhythms, both tracks tease the glittering, adrenaline charged vibes coursing through In Your Own Sweet Time.
Long-time fans of the band will be excited to find at its centre a series of banging, stadium-filling tracks like ‘I’ve Been Blind’, which features synthy 80s vibes before erupting into a raucous invitation to follow the band down the rabbit hole into a world of “lies” and “disguises”.
Similarly, with ‘Laugh-ing Gas’ it’s hard not to imagine the crowd singing and dancing along to the soaring guitar riffs and manic drum-work that accompany a joyous drifting between major and minor shifts.
Jon Fratelli characterises these tracks as an internal conversation; a reminder “not to take life too seriously”.
In Your Own Sweet Time certainly delivers on its own promise of ecstatic, almost absurdist fun.
Offered as an instant gratification track with pre-orders of the album, ‘The Next Time We Wed’ is a hyperactive slice of mischief matching the Fratellis’ characteristic impish theatricality and wit with ricocheting Prince-like guitar riffs. “It feels like a good representation of the record,” observes Jon.
And you can hear the Prince influence in particular as a new-found falsetto bleeds into the Fratelli’s bag of tricks, firing through ‘Told You So’, and the entertaining bathos of Romeo & Juliet riff ‘Starcrossed Losers’.
This album boasts all the sweaty, joyful energy of 1970s American pop mixed with English rock.
In these dark and uncertain times, sometimes all you need is to lose yourself in the moment so let Jon Fratelli (vox, guitar), Barry Fratelli (Bass), and Mince Fratelli (drums) guide you through the chaos.
They play the Academy on Monday, December 3.