WIN TICKETS TO SEE SONS AND DAUGHTERS + PEGGY SUE AT BRISTOL FLEECE
To coincide with the release of their new album, Mirror Mirror, Scottish indie band Sons and Daughters are embarking on a UK tour – which stops off at Bristol Fleece on October 22. Tickets are a snip at just ? but we’ve bagged a pair to give away to one lucky reader.
Formed in 2003, Sons and Daughters have had a varied career with each album carving its own sound and with their 2011 offering Mirror Mirror receiving rave reviews, there really is no better time to see them. Bunkered down in their rehearsal space inside an old town hall in Glasgow’s south-west district of Govan, Adele Bethel (vocals, guitar, piano), Scott Paterson (vocals, guitar), Ailidh Lennon (bass, mandolin, piano) and David Gow (drums, percussion) had the task of following up the denser, busier guitar-rock of 2008’s Bernard Butler-produced This Gift. Scott said: “We sound better when we’re more minimal. We wanted everything on the new album to be necessary, no added fluff, and only recording on 16-track.” Adele added: “We wanted something quite haunting and feminine. With an air of malevolence”. Scott said: “All we knew is we didn’t want to repeat ourselves. But for a year, we weren’t happy with what we’d written. But then “Rose Red” and a few other songs that followed finally gave us the direction we were looking for. But we weren’t prepared to record anything unless it was exciting, and fun. Once we did start recording, it only took a month.”
The tense sparse dynamic reaches back to their own past, namely 2006’s The Repulsion Box and the band’s 2004 mini-album debut Love The Cup, but also the 80s post-punk revolution in sound, from The Cure and This Heat to Gang Of Four, and then spun into something modern and timeless. Similarly, Adele talks of inspiration from Stevie Nicks (whose album Back Side Of The Mirror, Adele discovered after she’d named this one, was originally titled Mirror, Mirror…), Siouxsie, Kate Bush and PJ Harvey. Scott also mentions Fever Ray, and “Ink Free” has a similarly ominous undertow to that first lady of Swedish goth-folk-tronica. It’s also in these dark, veiled spaces that Adele stirs in themes of fairytales, serial killers and witchcraft, as well as tapping her own inner demons. The album title – turned into a forceful mantra on the opening “Silver Spell” over claustrophobic electronics and a clomping beat – comes from reflecting on all that darkness. Adele’s stunning performance on “Bee Song” stems from the idea of ‘head bees’, meaning depression and the idea of entrapment. “It’s strange talking about depression,” she says,” but many people suffer from it, and for years we’ve done benefits for mental health.”
To be in with a chance of winning a pair of tickets to see Sons and Daughters AND Peggy Sue (who we interviewed last month, see HERE) at Bristol Fleece gig on Saturday October 22, enter your name, address and number on the form below – remembering to put SONS AND DAUGHTERS in the subject line. Closing date October 20, winners to be informed by email on morning of October 21.
