Dance Me In

>>more photos

concert review: Sons and Daughters w/ The Double @ Lee's Palace(Toronto, Ontario), September 5, 2005

My friend and I ended Labour Day weekend on a high note with the Sons and Daughters show at Lee's Palace on Monday night. We walked in on Matador Records' The Double who were in the middle of their last song of their set. Buried within the song's noisy Sonic Youth/post rock instrumentation were hints at a melody begging to come to the surface. I thought they were interesting but I couldn't help but think that the instrumentation was just a tad bit busy. Ok, this is all based on half of one song so I won't jump to any conclusions until I have a chance to explore them further. Will that be anytime soon? Probably not, but I've made a mental note. There.

The wait between sets was upwards of forty minutes, unnecessarily long in my opinion, but all worth it when Sons and Daughters strolled onto the stage. I'd seen Sons and Daughters, first opening for Franz Ferdinand at Kool Haus in June 2004 and second when they opened for Clinic at Lee's Palace in November of 2004. This time around, Lee's Palace was a little under full capacity but otherwise the crowd was pretty enthusiastic. Co-lead vocalist Adele Bethel was a ball of energy dressed in a red leather skirt, strapless top and pumps, twisting and contorting her body as she snarled her vocals with a sinister but sexy bent. Other co-lead vocalist Scott Paterson's vocals alternated between a growl and a less intimidating tone. Drummer David Gow was impressive behind the kit, guiding the songs with a sense of urgency. Bass guitarist(as well as mandolin player) Ailidh Lennon, while a bit laidback as she gazed into the audience, was more than competent with her musical contributions. Maybe the best sounding-mandolin I've heard in a long time actually.

Best tracks were the mandolin-infused "Medicine", the dueling male-female vocals of "Red Receiver" and "Fight", the propulsive, punky "Dance Me In", the almost-Smiths sounding "Taste The Last Girl" and the guitar emphasis of "Broken Bones".

Unfortunately, there seemed to be an ongoing problem with Adele's vocals. It sounded way too low in the mix, and only when her vocals approached screaming vocals was I able to hear her vocals clearly. God knows what she said between songs; really her vocals were just that low in the mix, to the point where even audience members were shouting for the volume in the vocals to be turned up. With no encore, and stage banter being a blur due to the mic problem, it felt like they steam-rolled through their set. They do deserve props for inciting a good number of people, at least in front of the stage, to dance up a storm. Me, well I wasn't quite dancing but I had my head bobbing and legs shaking. And man, was it intense. ;-)

It's difficult to call Sons and Daughters' music country, punk, or even cow-punk. Their amalgam of influences sounds completely natural without an ounce of clichedness. Their first EP has a song called Johnny Cash and I think Sons and Daughters can claim an affinity with The Man in Black, at least in one respect: their music has balls.