Interview: Sons & Daughters

If you haven’t yet been acquainted with the music of Sons & Daughters, now’s a good time to be introduced. Produced by Optimo man JD Twitch, Mirror Mirror, their fourth and latest album, rides a wave of haunting sonic balance and bracing technique with barely a dip in form. This is a gym-honed ideal for the affable Glaswegians who’ve been making their own darkly-refined breed of rock ‘n’ roll for the past eleven years. Frontwoman Adele Bethel and drummer David Gow have been playing together still longer under the mantle of Arab Strap but Sons & Daughters — completed by Scott Paterson and Ailidh Lennon — are metallic silver to AS’s rich blue, a different  hue for a different beast. The Stool Pigeon managed a twenty-minute chat with David, who gamely risked irritating dressing-room comrades by “talking bollocks” before a set at the SWG3 Gallery in Glasgow.

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The Stool Pigeon: I’ve heard that Mirror Mirror is the favourite album so far for everyone in the band. True?

DG: Yeah, I guess so. I have to tread carefully now because the guy who engineered it is sitting right across from me… (laughs). I suppose it is our favourite… but we always say that. Your favourite is the last thing you’ve done, but this time I think we really did hit the nail on the head. The record was a real labour of love. It took a long time to make but that was because we wanted it just right. I think we succeeded.

How long did it take to make?

The best part of two years; the recording itself actually took a month but it took a while to find out what kind of direction we wanted to move in and what kind of sound we wanted to make.

It sounds like you had a quite specific idea of what you were trying to do?

I suppose so, but not so much in the beginning. We were — not struggling, exactly, but after the last one [2008’s Bernard Butler-helmed This Gift] we definitely wanted to make sure that we were happy with what we were doing and that it really represented our true influences and where are heads are.

And where are your heads?

Haha…Glasgow

What does Glasgow sound like?

Like a hubbub of half a million people all doing stuff at once.

What about the sound of this album makes you happy?

The fact that we recorded it exactly the way we wanted to. We used instruments this time that we’ve not used before, like vintage synths and other nice toys. We wanted quite a dubby sound for some of it and really got off on that. It’s a dark record but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t have fun while we made it. It should be fun to make music. If it’s not fun then the record is not going to be good. Also, I just love the sonics of it. There’s just a lot of space, which breeds tension. The more space there is the more you can create a tension and the more tension you can create the better the payoff. We’ve always tried to stick to that rule. You’ve got to keep it simple and it makes it meaner.

In the past you’ve cited your influences as gravelly-voiced musicians like Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits and obviously the folk tradition. Who has been most influential on this album?

When we were writing this, me and Scott (Paterson, guitar/vocals) got absolutely obsessed with Third, the Portishead record that came out during that time. We also got quite obsessed with The Knife, Fever Ray, Bat For Lashes and also Killing Joke, Public Image Limited and a lot of post-punk and dubbier stuff. We got excited and realised we could make something like that of our own.

What was the impact of being produced by JD Twitch?

It had a profound effect. His head is in dance music so he brought that. We’ve always made floor-pounders and he really saw that in us and wanted to amplify that. He seized on the rhythmic element and wanted to pronounce that in comparison to the last album which was quite harmony-led.

How does it work when the four of you collaborate? Do you all write the lyrics or does Adele write the lyrics?

Adele mainly, yes. Scott writes some. Anything Scott sings he’s generally written. There are two or three songs on the new record he sings lead on. He wrote the lyrics for them.

How does it then all work?

Oh, I don’t know. It’s a bit of an osmosis really. Somebody will come in with a bit and we slowly grind it into something else then chuck something else in and it starts to slowly form into a song. It’s pretty democratic, we’re all there doing that together.

And do you feel a special connection with Adele because you used to play together in your previous band, Arab Strap?

Yeah, that’s how we met essentially, back in the mists of time.

For the first two Sons & Daughters albums you were also in Arab Strap. Are you happier now you can dedicate yourself to one band?

All of us have still got different things going on. I’ve got another band that I play in. It’s always really good to do other stuff. It keeps everything fresh.

So you don’t get exhausted?

I could play drums 24 hours a day 365 days a year.

What bands around today really excite you and why?

We’ve got a band on tour with us at the moment called She’s Hit and they’re from Glasgow as well. They’re youngsters that play really garage-y rock music with quite an attitude. They’re fantastic. There are loads of bands in Glasgow at the minute.

You can read the review of Mirror Mirror here

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