Sons And Daughters: networking tonal infusion

This is a good week for gourmands of sound due to the choice of albums released - for the difference from the usual lot void of variety and often dubious quality: Coldplay, Kraftwerk, Sons And Daughters, The White Stripes… Almost something for everyone: softish rock for lovers and loners, pioneering electro-pop collection of live cuts for geeks and sick-puppies, post-artrockism for disfranchised yoof and whatever Jack and Meg are up to presently…

Sons And Daughters’ proper debut album, 'The Repulsion Box', is a disc that uses the currently favoured building-blocks - obsession with the 1980s New Wave/Art-rock - but it is only a foundation that far supersedes retro-ism of the buzz-crop of bands.

The Glasgow quartet have taken onboard myriad influences, mashed ‘em up and come up with a range of tunes that differing critics dub as a "UK answer to The White Stripes” or “The Delgados of tomorrow” or “[Nick Cave‘s] Bad Seeds with sex-appeal”… S&D are also tipped as the-most-likely-to, i.e. “the next Franz Ferdinand”. This four are culpable for all of the above and much more.

They deconstruct music and reassemble it with certain quirkiness, a twist and an olive: these are murder ballads with a dash of Goth-ism; the songs tend to be minimal but can explode inside your attention at any moment; there are guitar sounds that owe a lot to Andrew Gill [Gang Of Four] but also The Edge; add to it Krautrock, proto-punk [re: The Velvet Underground], a whiff of bucolichedelic, rockabilly and avant-details and you could be nearing ‘much more’…

It all contributes to the album being of much wider musical scope than their ‘rockist’ shows: Adele Bethal sings with passion and aggression of a budding ‘Punk princess’, alike Siouxsie Sioux, from the riff-off on ‘Medicine’: a bit tribal, completely primal - it gets you energy box severely rattled!

It is followed by ‘Red Receiver’ with Adele and co-front person/guitarist Scott Paterson’s duelling vocals [as they often do] but nowhere near as effectively as on ‘Choked’, that is a scrupulous homage to Go4 and a bloody brilliant one! ‘Hunt’ sounds like Stray Cats jamming with The Coral with Chrissie Hynde fronting it. Just to show that they have a sense of humour ‘Royally Used’ is akin to Adam And The Ants’ off-shot Chiefs of Relief.

‘Monsters’ is jig-a-jolly that could be Jack White-gone-folklore but what S&D don‘t trade in is pop element: these songs are harsher, more dynamic and potent, more demanding and far more involving than the chart contending wallpaper. S&D do what Garbage should be but Shirley Manson and her men appear to have lost the plot… or, are too old to be bothered.

Alas, ‘The Repulsion Box’ is a blast of 10 short, vital and luminous songs that all are delivered in less than 32 minutes!? But, Sons And Daughters don’t fit your average package…

8.2/10