Albums Of The Year: Number 9

The only time we've seen Sons And Daughters was outside at a festival. An overcast, sporadically wet festival, but that's not good enough. The place where The Repulsion Box yields its best results would seem to be somewhere dank, forbidding and possibly haunted. You might recall Sons And Daughters as the Franz-approved band attempting to merge punk-funk with alt-country on their Love The Cup mini-album. This album found an alternate way of realising the dilemma, taking in the intense junkyard blues of PJ Harvey circa Dry or the Birthday Party, garage rock's unrelenting rhythms and the taut tension of a Come On Pilgrim-era Pixies. Some things remain unchanged - Adele Bethel and Scott Paterson often sounded like they'd be at each other's throats if they weren't performing, it's just now they want to be at ours too.

So yes, opener Medicine sounds like Yummy Yummy Yummy I've Got Love In My Tummy, but as played in an articulated lorry speeding over traffic calming devices. On Choked Paterson makes a slide guitar sound like prime Sonic Youth, while Rama Lama extends over five minutes, incorporates Morricone whistling against an often minimal backing and still retains the air of slow decay somewhere underground. Now imagine all this fronted by two people with Glaswegian accents and audible sneers. You perhaps see what we mean about their incompatibility with outdoor performances now. Going hell for leather at everything, barely keeping itself under control for three minutes at a time, if it went on for any more than its 31 minutes it'd become far too overwhelming, as it is settling for mere claustrophobia, the band pinning themselves back to the wall by the sheer force of their playing. That great crossover potential will just have to wait its turn while the rest of us get lost in the tidal wave of mutant country punk rockabilly.

LISTEN IN: Red Receiver
EXTRA FEATURE: Channel 4's Ideas Factory gets, well, ideas from Paterson