Sons And Daughters
The Repulsion Box (Domino)
by Marc Hirsh

originally published on Amplifier online, August 16, 2005

The Repulsion Box very nearly makes good on the promise of last year’s Love The Cup and the rerecorded “Johnny Cash” single that followed, snapping Sons And Daughters’ sound into focus as Scott Paterson’s slashing guitar and Adele Bethel’s angry Glasgow burr fight for your ear’s sweet spot while drummer David Gow and bassist/mandolinist Ailidh Lennon wind up your nerves tighter and tighter. They burst out of the gate bristling with energy and already breathless on the opening “Medicine,” and the album sounds like it’s made up of nothing but live takes; when the instruments drop out of “Red Receiver” and the band simply claps along and sings slightly out of microphone range, the sonic imperfection is overcome by the tension and the sense of physical space they generate.

Unfortunately, the very real high points of The Repulsion Box work more as individual moments than as sustained songs that go anywhere in particular. It’s one thing to compare the zippier and meaner new “Hunt” to the earlier single version or to note how Bethel’s chanting of “shake shake shake shake” in “Rama Lama” is the sonic equivalent of a coiled snake finally striking. It’s another to be carried along by the momentum of the songs themselves.

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