With a third album, This Gift, in the shops but not the charts, Sons and Daughters continue to hover on the brink of bigger things while maintaining a relentless touring schedule. Produced by Bernard Butler, the album is a bold step forward for the Glaswegian quartet, converting their scrawny brand of Celtic punkabilly into a more rounded rock’n’roll shape.
On stage in London, the two-man, two-woman group brought the songs to life with plenty of rude, energetic dazzle, none more so than the lead singer Adele Bethel, who arrived wrapped in a blue dress the size of a tea towel, and with her raven-black hair and eyelids caked in glitter. To her left, the bass player Ailidh Lennon maintained a more demure and mysterious presence in a silver dress, while on the opposite wing the guitarist and singer Scott Paterson loomed like a 1950s rocker in a black jacket and quiff, his guitar parts reverberating with plenty of deep-fried twang.
Their music was driven along by the galloping tattoos of the drummer Dave Gow, a scrawny southpaw who hammered his kit with such bruising force that he broke the head of his snare during Rebel with the Ghost. As the band blasted through numbers such as The Nest and the recent single, Gilt Complex, Bethel sang her high, keening vocal lines, accompanied by Paterson who supplied a series of Highland-punk chants, arranged in counterpoint. The effect was quite tribal and, at their best moments - during the hectic skirl of Dance Me In and the infectious stomp of Chains - they captured a rare sense of locomotive drama.
But, while admiring the force and focus of their musical vision, it was a bit one-dimensional. Everything was taken at a fast canter or reckless gallop, leaving no room for any slow or even medium-paced songs. And while Bethel’s voice was an instrument of commanding effect, her emotional range was limited to intimations of dark sorrow and occasional bursts of anger, but not a great deal more.
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ABC, Glasgow, tomorrow; Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Sat