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Sons & Daughters.
Sons & Daughters guitarist/vocalist Scott Paterson apologises fulsomely when he works out what the time difference is between his Glasgow home and Adelaide. "Oh my god mate, I'm so sorry for having to get you up in the morning to do this for me," he gasps. I mumble something about strong coffee and the rigors of the journalist's art and try to ignore the fact that he's had a far more demanding schedule than I, since his band have essentially been touring non-stop for the past eight months.
"We were playing in Ireland last night and we just got in, so I'm doing my washing and catching up on my emails. It's nice to be home, for a day - I get to stay home for another twelve hours, then we're off again," he laughs. "But it's good, I'd rather have it this way than any other way."
'This way' involves roaming around the northern hemisphere in support of the bands recently-released debut full-length album 'The Repulsion Box'. "We recorded it in Cologne in February and it was all finished and mastered by March, so it has been one of the quickest turn-arounds for anything we've recorded - like, that album that was out last year [the 'Love The Cup' mini-album] was recorded really quickly as well but it took a while to come out. It's been nice because we've not had really painful thing of 'I wish the album was out' and we haven't had long to wait to see the reaction to it. But we've been so busy we haven't really had time to worry about it."
The result is a dark, raw, soulful record that captures the energy of a tight live band, which makes their choice of studio a little odd. The studio is owned and run by legendary German producer Connie Plank and is best known as the place where Kraftwerk created their masterpieces. Paterson is quick to correct me, however, when I suggest it's an incongruous match. "We're big fans of everything that was done at Connie's, like Kraftwerk, Neu!, Brian Eno - they're not an obvious influence I admit, but they are an influence - but it wasn't our idea initially. Laurence [Bell, head of their label Domino] is really good at picking unusual studios for bands to go to and he recommended that. And we knew they had the same old gear, like the same [mixing] desk that Connie built in the '70s, and Victor [van Vugt, producer] had been there before to do a Tindersticks record and he said it was great. And it was studio you could live in, and it was really nice out in the countryside in Cologne."
Victor? Tindersticks? Now we're starting to make sense. Sons
& Daughters' propulsive, blues/country-tinged music has more
than a bit in common with the 'Sticks, while van Vugt has produced
everyone from Beth Orton and Athlete to PJ Harvey to Nick Cave
& The Bad Seeds, the last of which is an obvious influence on
the Scots quartet. The album's first single Dance Me In
has a similar driving pulse to the Bad Seeds' Tupelo,
for example.
"A lot of people have been saying that as well," Paterson chuckles. "And we are big fans of all that stuff, and Victor's done a lot of records that we really love. We had a wish list of people we wanted [to produce the record], some ridiculous, some that could happen, and Victor was on our list. And as it happens Laurence had met Victor in New York just after he signed us and said 'I've got this new band, I think you'd be perfect for them'. So he came to Glasgow and saw us and we just really got on: he's just a really great guy and he was into all the same music we were into, which meant that we never had to try to explain what sort of guitar sound we wanted."
It sounds like the recording was positively idyllic: a dream producer, a classic studio, gorgeous surrounds. It would have been perfect, had there not been a city-wide clown infestation. "Yes!" Paterson laughs. "There's this thing called the Carnival where Cologne just shuts down for a week and everyone dresses up as clowns and drinks loads of beer. So whenever we went down to the local pub at night there'd be all these really odd looking people getting plastered."
And of course, I trust that the band entered into the spirit: after all, when in Cologne... "No, man, we didn't, but you're right, we should've dressed up," he laughs. "It would've leant a different air to the record I think, had we all been wearing clown masks..."
Andrew P Street
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'The Repulsion Box' is out now through Domino/Remote Control/Inertia.
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