Welcome Back

The Fratellis skyrocketed to the forefront of Glasgow's music scene off the back of the success of their infectious 2006 single, Chelsea Dagger (you know the one!). The single became an instant hit worldwide and saw the band tour the globe extensively in the years that followed.

As with many bands who spend every waking minute of every day together, tensions began to arise amongst the group, and Jon Fratelli explains, “We were probably not looking at things in the right way, I guess. You only know that after the fact, of course, but at the time [the break-up] felt like the only thing that could happen for us. It was kind of inevitable. Even though I would say that we all felt the same way, it just took one of us, me, to kind of say something about it. It felt like the only thing was to just walk away – I tend to just do things rather than think about things, regardless of whether I'm right or not. I would much rather do something than just sort of be unhappy in a certain scenario.”

During the three years that The Fratellis ceased to be, Fratelli explored several other musical projects, primarily his band with Lou Hickey, Codeine Velvet Club, and eventually his own solo work. When asked whether he used the time to pursue any other non-musical goals, Fratelli reveals, “That's the thing, I have nothing else! I turned 35 last week and I think I've finally stopped trying to find something else. I used to keep thinking, 'Shouldn't I have something else?' But there just isn't, I'm not really interested in anything else and I'm not compelled to do anything else, which I've got to say is quite frustrating; to have all your eggs in one basket is dangerous because what if all of a sudden that wasn't there? But that's why I just continued on the way I had been going, which is just to keep writing and recording. There's really nothing else that can keep me engaged long enough.”

With this revelation of his interests and ambitions at the front of his mind, Fratelli decided to approach his former bandmates to gauge their interest in coming back together. “One day I woke up and felt that it was a good idea to start again,” Fratelli relays. “It's not very poetic but it really is that simple. It just came down to a realisation that we probably had (or I hoped that we had) an audience that still wanted to hear us play. And it's been 18 months now, and we've kind of proved that that's the case. We just felt like, 'Isn't this ridiculous? If there's all these people that want to see us play, then we should just go on and play!' I know heaps of people who have been writing and trying to play to people and they just kind of can't find an audience, and we have one, so it was just this realisation keeping it really simple. It doesn't have to be complicated.”

Reflecting on the improvements which have been made to the band since their reunion, Fratelli believes, “We definitely learned something about putting effort in. I think towards the end of our last incarnation we sort of lost a little bit momentum – we thought it was enough to sort of just show up, plug in and play, but you know what? Actually that's not enough. If you're not dead by the end of every show, then you haven't done enough. There's definitely a bit more feeling behind what we're playing now, and I don't see any signs of that disappearing, so I'm glad that we've learned that lesson.”

To mark their return to the scene, the band released their third studio album We Need Medicine late last year. “We'd played a couple of shows since we got back together and noticed that we were really leaning heavily on the first record, we didn't use a whole lot from the second record in the live show. We wanted to attempt to make something we could play live, and have it kind of tell its own story. I just had to write a bunch of songs that would feel like we could sink our teeth into every night. Playing every night, you have to have a certain bunch of ingredients that can keep you connected to the songs and actually just enjoy them. I feel like we got what we were aiming for, which was a record to play live. It might not be the main goal for the next record we make, but this one was just what we needed.”