Codeine Velvet Club
About the music...
Codeine Velvet Club is a new musical collaboration featuring Jon Lawler – lead singer and chief songwriter of The Fratellis – and singer-songwriter Lou Hickey. It celebrates their shared love of ’60s girl-boy duets, dramatic orchestral pop, and dark post-war Hollywood and Las Vegas romanticism.
About Codeine Velvet Club...
For Jon Lawler, Codeine Velvet Club offers a respite from the whirlwind of touring, recording and non-stop promo that enveloped The Fratellis after their debut album. When the promotional commitments for the group’s second album, ‘Here We Stand’, ended, it was agreed that the Glasgow three-piece should take a well-earned breather.
Never one for resting on his laurels Jon offered to help write a track for family friend Lou Hickey. ‘Vanity Kills’, as it came to be titled, emerged as a swaying, jazzy, big-band duet, tinged with noir-ish menace and shades of Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood’s waspish 1960s guy-gal duelling. The quality of the track inspired the pair to embark on their own album, a record which Jon wanted to sound like “John Barry playing with a rock’n’roll band”.