I’m interested in listening to any new band with a drummer called Mince. Upon listening to their album, you get the impression that the uniquely named Mince, along with Barry on bass and Jon on guitar and vocals, had nothing but a good time writing and recording this album.
Collectively known as The Fratellis and hailing from Glasgow, Scotland, their debut album Costello Music is a modern indie rock delight. With so many bands releasing premature albums with two mediocre singles and then another ten tracks that sound like they are just there to fill a void, Costello Music is refreshingly whole.
Every track is worthy of sitting alongside the other. Put simply, they are all just incredibly infectious rock songs with clever, cute lyrics and choruses that will remain in your head all day. Lyrically, they tell fine stories about life and girls – they are rock stars after all, without too many a cliche in sight.
With lines like “I got my nuts from a hippie in a camper van on Saturday night”, how can you not warm to them?
This album has no agenda. It’s not trying to be brooding or dark. It’s just a collection of seemingly simple yet clever and well-executed pop songs. Its energy remains throughout, and at no point does it lose your interest. But that’s where it ends. They don’t have a terrific amount of depth, you don’t hear anything new upon the third or fourth listen and for that reason I fear it may get old reasonably quickly.
There are few slight dalliances from pure modern indie rock however, and, dare I make the comparison, the track ‘Everybody Knows You Cried Last Night’ has a hint of Clash-like ska-rock about its opening bars. It’s those little differences that makes this album just that much better than every other British indie rock release of the last twelve months – which is something to be applauded when there are so many bad ones to wade through at the moment.
This is the kind of album you put on in your flat to get ready to before heading out for the night and I believe every household needs one of those. Don’t over think The Fratellis – just enjoy them.