The cover is, frankly, dreadful. Is it supposed to link to the album’s title, which suggests they’re on a collision course? One can only assume so. Thankfully, I’m not listening to the cover, but the music therein. It’s not as bad as the cover, but it ain’t great, and the lyrics are depressingly lackluster. ‘My chest keeps getting bigger but it will never burst’, Derby band The Sons sing with jubilant gusto on ‘Death Love Money’. ‘Crowd Went Wild’ ventures into a more straight swampy rock territory, although I can’t help but think the likelihood of the title being anything but a fantasy is rather unlikely. Not that there’ anything fundamentally wrong with ‘Heading Into Land’, and the terrace-chanty ‘lalala’ refrain on the summery jaunt of ‘When I Want To’ evidently has major festival appeal.
‘I’m Not Happy’ seems like a rather lazy response to ‘My Girl’, singer Paul Herron lamenting the myriad reasons he’s got to be fed up despite his new cars and swimming pool, and ‘Relic’ comes on like a council estate Elton John.
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Everything about The Sons – from the images of the crowded town boozer and the band in and out of pubs, the kitchen sink scenes and sociopolitical observations – is centred around notions of traditional Englishness (recurrent nautical imagery notwithstanding, although perhaps being an island country has something to do with it). Not in a nationalistic way, you understand, but in a slightly misty-eyed and laddish sort of a way, and no doubt when they’re not touring they all go round to their mam’s for tea. Music by regular, ordinary guys for regular ordinary guys, and ultimately, very ordinary indeed.
The Sons Online
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