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sons and daughters
sons and daughters interview
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Dark and mournful electric folk from Glasgow.

In this CD age, when bands are under pressure to fill up the 74 minutes with “bonus” material, it’s refreshing to come across a small but perfectly formed album that’s proud to parade its seven tracks as a complete work. Sons And Daughters’ debut release, Love The Cup, clocks in at just over 25 minutes, but it’s all the more thrilling and intriguing for its brevity. And, as drummer David Gow explains, it allowed the band to woo audiences with their more accessible side. “When we started the band we played slow, piano-led country music. Then we wrote a couple of songs that were more upbeat and realised that we really enjoyed playing those. So we collected the faster songs and put them together as a record. We still have a lot of slower songs which we might introduce on the next record.”

Glasgow’s Sons And Daughters are two lads and two lasses who bonded over a shared passion for dark and mournful music. “We’re not a particularly happy band. Our music’s not really very joyful,” admits David. “We like a lot of singer/songwriters like Leonard Cohen, Will Oldham, Tom Waits and Bill Callahan’s Smog. But we love a lot of fun music as well,” he adds hastily. “That’s just not what we wanted to do with Sons And Daughters.”



What he and his bandmates have done with Sons And Daughters is create a brooding, atmospheric album of electric folk music, driven by Adele Bethel and Scott Paterson’s urgent boy/girl vocal interplay. And, although David describes their music as “dark rock’n’roll”, the band aren’t afraid to nail their country influences to the mast, even going as far as naming a song after their musical hero Johnny Cash. “It’s certainly a tribute, but we’ve actually had that song for a good two years. It started out as a two-step drum beat that we called Johnny Cash as we were writing it. When we finished the song we named it something else but we didn’t like it as much, so we just kept calling it Johnny Cash and the name stuck.”

Johnny Cash will be released as a single in September. In the meantime, though, Sons And Daughters have shows to play across the UK and America, consolidating the fanbase they developed while on tour with friends and labelmates Franz Ferdinand. “We were pals with Franz Ferdinand for a good while before we both signed to Domino, so it was amazing to tour with them,” enthuses David. “We played to over 2,000 people in Los Angeles and New York. A lot of their audience hadn’t heard of us yet, but the reception we got every night was fantastic. Young Franz Ferdinand fans are obviously keen on music in general.” Franz Ferdinand may not be Domino’s only breakout band of 2004 for much longer.


Sarah Cohen 16 July 04
Sons And Daughters - Love The Cup, released 12 July 04 on Domino.
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