Album review: Jon Fratelli, Psycho Jukebox

Published on Sunday 17 July 2011 19:56

For all Jon Fratelli's attempts at reinvention, there's something very familiar – even stale – about this solo project

Jon Fratelli: Psycho Jukebox

Island, 13.99 **

LIKE the Littlest Hobo, Jon Fratelli just keeps moving on, never settling long in any one incarnation but always appearing to have more or less the same musical adventure wherever he goes. In little over five years he has loved and left two bands: knees-up indie rock trio The Fratellis, with whom he stuck for long enough to release the archetypal under-performing follow-up to the smash hit debut before bailing out in the middle of a US tour (the script writes itself), then re-surfacing in Codeine Velvet Club, the somewhat classier twin-vocal vehicle he formed with burlesque singer Lou Hickey. He has so far been careful not to make definitive pronouncements on the future of The Fratellis but since putting the latter combo to bed, Fratelli has remarked that "I'm not sure if I'm suited to the personalities and politics that sometimes go into being in an official band".

Unofficially, he recorded this solo debut with his CVC bandmates, minus Hickey, and his old compatriot Mince Fratelli is set to return on drums when he plays live, so he's not completely crap at band relationships.

In another mark of continuity, this new set of songs was recorded in the LA studio of Tony Hoffer, who produced The Fratellis' debut Costello Music. Fratelli, however, regards Psycho Jukebox as a separate deal from previous endeavours, one where he is free to run rampant with his influences. To dispassionate ears, though, this sounds like a Fratellis album in everything but name.

On a song by song basis, there is a touch more dynamic variety but beyond the odd sonic embellishment – fuzz guitar, or squelchy keyboard, say – Fratelli has built his songs on familiar foundations. On this jukebox, you are never far from an earworm hookline, often in the form of an insidious chant, from wanton shifts in tempo, lyrics which are more like a collection of buzz-phrases rather than a fully explored concept and an overall Oasis-y sound which was already tired about ten years ago. If that sounds like your bag, recent single Santo Domingo combines the lot.

Another album taster, Rhythm Doesn't Make You A Dancer, sounds like it was released to appease anxious Fratellis fans. Its crude stomp could easily have slotted into Costello Music or any old album by some bunch of post-Britpop chancers. The Gallagher-worthy chorus couplet "one plus one don't equal an answer, rhythm doesn't make you a dancer" belies the more surreal images in the verses.

The communal chantalong continues with She's My Shaker's over-familiar "la la la" chorus and the T Rex chug (as rendered by Ocean Colour Scene) of Baby We're Refugees! Elsewhere, that perennial restlessness is manifested in the tempo changes of Tell Me Honey which shifts gears from indie blues grind to make a sudden bolt through the verses, and Daddy Won't Pay Your Bill whose roots rock boogie gives way to a twanging chorus and a chiming middle eight.

Fratelli's vocals are as elegantly dishevelled as his hair, with enough of a rocker edge to pull off the indie Springsteen stance (there's a lot of it about this week). However, the blue-collar passion invested into The Band Played Just For Me produces something akin to the fist-pumping 80s warcries of The Alarm.

Caveman is no troglodyte rocker but an unashamedly retro slice of 60s pop whimsy of the sort which The Coral have dished up dreamily over the past decade. Although it is nothing spectacular in itself, its softer contours are a welcome alternative to the brash blokey numbers. Fratelli would probably baulk at the suggestion that he writes lad anthems, but when you play boisterous it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye.

He's in touch with his feminine side too. Fratelli claims to have laboured long and hard over the track Magic & Mayhem. The effort was worthwhile, as it's the most pleasingly crafted song in the collection. The recording musters some of the rhythmic northern soul uplift and romanticism of his Codeine Velvet Club material, but it is crying out for a contribution from Hickey to contrast with Fratelli's gruff bluster.

Give Me My Heart Back MacGuire, the tale of a girl who falls for an artist, was originally written for CVC. With its sighing strings, tremolo guitar, syncopated beat and percussion, it sounds like a torch song playing in a holiday- camp lounge bar. That's a compliment, by the way.

Album climax Oh Shangri La brings together the yin and yang with its banner-waving sweep and massed backing vocals and essence of Bay City Rollers. That's also a compliment, but it's the last of only a few which can be attached to this mostly journeyman effort.