*From Scotsman - November 16, 2007*

There's only one Rooney

NOT to be confused with a certain chubby Scouse striker, Rooney are a five-piece retro rock outfit from LA, whose frontman happens to be the nephew of film-making god-father Francis Ford Coppola and the cousin of Oscar-winning actor Nicolas Cage.

With or without singer Robert Carmine's Hollywood connections, it's clear this lot have talent. And while they have a distinctive style, their sound is compared to every-thing from The Beatles to Blur.

They may have taken their moniker from the bumbling high school principal in teen flick Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but things are going great for Rooney, whose record sales rocketed after they made a cameo appearance in an episode of The OC.

The band also saw sophor-more album Calling the World crash into the US Billboard Top 200 at a respectable No42 this summer, and the lads have been in non-stop tour mode for the last few years, building up their fan-base on tour with Weezer, The Strokes and Keane. On Tuesday, it's headlining duties of their own when they mark their first Capital appearance with a stop at Cabaret Voltaire.

Clearly there's a heavy Brit influence to Rooney's music, but singer Carmine insists no one band had more of an impact than the others when it came to structuring their sound.

"All the Brit-Invasion bands are different, you know?" he says. "I mean, The Zombies are the most unique pop group from the early Sixties. But I also like The Beatles, and I also like this band called the Dave Clarke Five and The Small Faces - they're pretty good, as well.

"I'm a big fan of The Kinks, I think we all agree the things they've done have been really good.

"The thing about those bands is that you put on one of their CDs and the songs don't all sound the same. Every song has a different sort of vibe."

And that's precisely what Rooney were aiming for when making Calling The World - a more rounded recording than their self-titled debut.

"It has all the hooks the first record had and more," claims Carmine, who laughs while insisting we should all go out and buy a copy because, "It will keep you entertained top to bottom, no skipping necessary."

-Gary Flockhart