The Fratellis: Here We Stand : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

In 2006, this scottish trio burst onto the U.K. charts with their debut, Costello Music, where they sounded like popwise lads who'd downed a steady diet of T.Rex, Oasis and beer. Here We Stand keeps up its predecessor's swagger, but the album's debts to glam and Brit-rock forbears (there's some Bowie and Clash here, too) give you a vague sense you've heard these songs before. Still, that doesn't mean tracks like "Shameless" and "Mistress Mabel" — both of which pack stellar bar-rock hooks and big, memorable choruses — won't inspire some spirited pubwide singalong. Frontman Jon Fratelli certainly sounds like he's having fun, dishing cracked croons about sleeping around and drinking too much, and, on "Acid-Jazz Singer," meeting a woman while he's lying in the gutter. Jonny Boy doesn't have much of substance to say, but in the grand tradition of Liam Gallagher, he uses that fact to his advantage — he's just a rock star, damn it. As he cheekily declares on the Neil Diamond-esque "Look Out Sunshine," "I'm a cynical cunt/And I'm much too lazy to change."