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Love The Cup - album
Ba Da Bing!: BING041
Released: 25/11/2003 on CD.
Tracklist:
1. Fight [hi] - [lo]
2. Broken Bones [hi] - [lo]
3. Johnny Cash [hi] - [lo]
4. Blood [hi] - [lo]
5. Start To End [hi] - [lo]
6. La Lune [hi] - [lo]
7. Awkward Duet [hi] - [lo]
View sleevenotes...
Have a look at the Domino release of the same album, for more reviews.
Buy this release online now!
splendidezine - 02 Feb 2004
Love the Cup
On November 25, 2003, this cute and generally polite Scottish band released their first LP in the United States on a small New Jersey label. Missy Elliot released This is Not a Test on the same day. Why is this significant? It isn't, but I thought it might help to hammer home, once again, the fun of diversity in music. More than anyone in mainstream pop, Elliot and Timbaland actively strive to create new sounds and push things forward. A band like Sons and Daughters, on the other hand, are -- let's face it -- one in a million. The specifics of their sound are distinct because it's still a fresh set of people, but nothing on Love the Cup could be mistaken for missionary or futuristic. Sons and Daughters play amiable folk and country-tinged rock songs, the likes of which you've almost certainly heard before... and yet I really like Love the Cup, and lots of you probably would, too. Music lovers keep coming back to safe bets like this, because when a style you enjoy is rehashed so well, it never gets old. Either that or we're all a bunch of visionless squares.
First, their pedigree: Adele Bethel and drummer David Gow are touring and recording members of Arab Strap and the excellent band The Zephyrs, while Scott Paterson fronts his own project, March of Dimes. Their last release was an EP in 2002 that settled for sedate prettiness, but the band lashes out on Love the Cup. Because of their twee streak, though, there's something awfully adorable about them when they "rock out". "Johnny Cash" is an enthusiastic tribute to the late legend, spiked with a screaming chorus and backing "whoop whoops!" from Gow and bassist Aildh Lennon. "Blood" is a genuine barnburner with raunchy, almost shrill guitars and dual vocals by Bethel and Paterson, who scream to each other, "you're my blood!"
In the tradition of The Velvet Underground, most of these songs are happy to meditate on a single riff, piling on intensity and nuance through layering instead of darting between verse, chorus and bridge. "Fight" even seems to nod to The Strokes' inescapable "Last Nite" riff, although Lennon's mandolin and Bethel's unmuffled vocals dispel other surface similarities. She and Paterson alternate on vocal duties from song to song; although their thick accents render half of the lyrics unintelligible, it's never anything but gorgeous. "Awkward Duet" is the album's quietest song, and the best; Gow lays down a soft, persistent cadence, on top of which the band stacks lovely, finger-picked guitar and the vocalists' enigmatic refrain, "your complexion / my reaction".
Missy's great and all, at a party. Love the Cup is for the morning ride home.
Justin Stewart
Read the original review
Reviews:
02 Feb 2004, splendidezine
01 Feb 2004, Amplifier Magazine
29 Jan 2004, Arizona Daily Wildcat
09 Nov 2003, Scotland on Sunday
01 Nov 2003, Is This Music?
30 Oct 2003, artrocker.com
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