Don't Look Now: Sons and Daughters

Stewart Gardiner talks to Sons and Daughters in this archive feature from 2005, alongside some thoughts on the band’s legacy today

Adele Bethel has cornered me. She has something to say that she wants me to tell you: Sons and Daughters are a feminist band.

It’s a statement of intent, and one I put to the guys in the group. Scott Paterson (who shares voice/guitar duties with Adele) and David Gow (drums) start off in agreement, before withdrawing from anything too conclusive.

“Well, I mean, Adele’s the lyricist,” says Scott. David says, “the band’s really a fifty/fifty split.”

“Can I make a word up? I’d say we’re more equalists.” Drawing out the shaky neologism, Scott gives out an embarrassed cry for help. “If you put that in, can you just make sure that I laugh after it? Just so I don’t look like a complete dick.”

Not to worry: Sons and Daughters would be hard pushed to appear even a little short of beautifully chiselled, natural cool. Along with bassist and mandolin player Ailidh Lennon, they are clearly the group most likely to in 2005. Passed an early copy of debut mini-album Love the Cup in October 2003, I was infatuated to the extent that I couldn’t possibly imagine a band I loved this much becoming as big as they soon will be. And that’s no reflection on them; I’m merely pointing to my taste as not normally setting the masses a-whooping.

An ace forthcoming single recorded with Edwyn Collins, “Dance Me In”, punches their country blues punk howl even deeper into lopsided pop glory, its handclaps further revealing the band’s accessibility while simultaneously distancing them from surface sheen. As if that didn’t spell out enough potential for you, their first full-length proper (expected May) will have Victor Van Vugt at the controls. A man whose start in music was doing live sound for The Birthday Party, he seems the perfect choice to forego all thoughts of reining in, and get down to the bloody task at hand. For Sons and Daughters are a band fuelled by need and love, and the human impulse to give in to need and to question love. Sons and Daughters are a pop band, after all.

“We’re not pretentious people,” concurs Scott. “We don’t do anything for high art’s sake, or anything like that. We’re not snobs.”

As a result of who they are and what they have become, a late 2004 support slot for the Delgados at Glasgow Barrowlands was so much more than just another show or another tour. That it was a triumphant homecoming lent it even more significance. That the after-effects ran riot through heart, soul and body spoke volumes.

“It was a real kind of knee-trembler, you know?” ponders Scott, unsure of his own words. But it’s those words that best capture the experience of the band: from the outside looking in, Sons and Daughters, are themselves, a real kind of knee-trembler.

2022 thoughts

Sons and Daughters called it in a day in 2012, after releasing their most compelling artistic statement the previous year in the shape of Mirror Mirror, their fourth LP. Bruce Springsteen has described Darkness on the Edge of Town as his samurai record and that might well apply to Mirror Mirror also. The signature Sons and Daughters sound of new wave Americana from Glasgow is stripped down and rebuilt on this final record, subtly realised by Optimo’s JD Twitch behind the desk. Lyrically, it’s the stuff of Hollywood dreams as film noir nightmares (take the Black Dahlia referencing “Axed Actor” for example: “So for your last role / The last of a picture show / Cut into pieces”), the words closing in on you with nowhere-to-run intensity. Imagine the dark heart of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive distilled into a suite of ten knife-sharp songs. Indeed, Sons and Daughters would have been perfect gracing the stage of The Roadhouse in the town of Twin Peaks.

I genuinely think there’s an argument to be made for Sons and Daughters as the best Scottish band of the past 25 years. At least they remain one of my personal favourites and I pretty much always play something by them when DJing (“Rose Red” has featured heavily). They burned with an intensity that did well to survive more than a decade in action, so short of pleading with the gods for a reunion, I’d like to formally request that Domino reissue the Sons and Daughters back catalogue on vinyl and get Monorail on board with some exclusive signed editions. This needs to be more than a dream.