Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh
4 stars
Sons And Daughters look thrilled to be home. After four weeks on tour following the release of their second full-length album, This Gift, produced by former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler, they’re clearly letting off a little steam en route to playing their spiritual home in Glasgow’s Grand Old Opry this week.
Boy/girl vocal foils Adele Bethel and Scott Paterson are in chipper form. Sartorially too, in the shiny spirit of their dazzling Gilt Complex single, it’s party frocks a-go-go. Where Paterson is all tucked-in silver shirt and Gene Vincent quiff and bassist Ailidh Lennon sports a spangly frock, Bethel opts for butt-skimming t-shirt dress and over-the-knee boots a la pin-up era Debbie Harry. Only drummer David Gow dresses down, though such style choices point up the band’s musical roots somewhere between Nashville and New York.
Indeed, with such wired-up influences, Sons And Daughters punkabilly Country n’ West End of Glasgow Garage has far more live bite than on record. And once told they’ve only 15 minutes to curfew, everything’s played in hell-for-leather double time. This makes Dance Me In even more urgent, while soon-come single Darling is a glorious bubblegum stomp.
Yet, for all their end-of-term levity, Sons And Daughters most resemble angsty agit-angularists The Au Pairs. Where the Birmingham separatists wore their post-punk gender wars on their hairy-arm-pitted sleeves, for all the stridency of Bethel’s vocal and the Cathy Come Home social-realism of new song The Nest, Sons And Daughters are less self-conscious and more willing to let their own teased-up coiffures down. As the insertion of I Wanna Be Your Dog into Johnny Cash so thrillingly proves.
The Herald, December 4th 2007
ends
4 stars
Sons And Daughters look thrilled to be home. After four weeks on tour following the release of their second full-length album, This Gift, produced by former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler, they’re clearly letting off a little steam en route to playing their spiritual home in Glasgow’s Grand Old Opry this week.
Boy/girl vocal foils Adele Bethel and Scott Paterson are in chipper form. Sartorially too, in the shiny spirit of their dazzling Gilt Complex single, it’s party frocks a-go-go. Where Paterson is all tucked-in silver shirt and Gene Vincent quiff and bassist Ailidh Lennon sports a spangly frock, Bethel opts for butt-skimming t-shirt dress and over-the-knee boots a la pin-up era Debbie Harry. Only drummer David Gow dresses down, though such style choices point up the band’s musical roots somewhere between Nashville and New York.
Indeed, with such wired-up influences, Sons And Daughters punkabilly Country n’ West End of Glasgow Garage has far more live bite than on record. And once told they’ve only 15 minutes to curfew, everything’s played in hell-for-leather double time. This makes Dance Me In even more urgent, while soon-come single Darling is a glorious bubblegum stomp.
Yet, for all their end-of-term levity, Sons And Daughters most resemble angsty agit-angularists The Au Pairs. Where the Birmingham separatists wore their post-punk gender wars on their hairy-arm-pitted sleeves, for all the stridency of Bethel’s vocal and the Cathy Come Home social-realism of new song The Nest, Sons And Daughters are less self-conscious and more willing to let their own teased-up coiffures down. As the insertion of I Wanna Be Your Dog into Johnny Cash so thrillingly proves.
The Herald, December 4th 2007
ends
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