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Bands to Watch – Sons and Daughters

Who: Co-ed country-blues quartet from Glasgow who pal around with arty dance kings Franz Ferdinand but profess true love for classic American folkies. “The band’s name came to me in a dream where a young Bob Dylan was singing, ‘Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command,'” says singer/guitarist Adele Bethel, who played in Arab Strap with drummer David Gow.

Sound like: The cast of Trainspotting fronting a tight roadhouse punk band. On their debut, Love the Cup, Bethel and singer/guitarist Scott Paterson trade love-and-death lyrics (think X’s Exene Cervenka and John Doe) over spare blues riffs, while multi-instrumentalist Ailidh Lennon lightens the harsh drone with her mandolin.

American history XXX: While touring the States, the group learned about U.S. culture by checking out truck stops. “There was one in the desert with a gas station on one side and a massive porn warehouse on the other,” says Paterson incredulously. Their cross-country journey also inspired a fairly ambitious fantasy: “To play the bottom of the Grand Canyon,” says Gow. “We could get Evel Knievel to jump the canyon, and resurrect Johnny Cash,” Paterson says, grinning. “That’d be the best gig ever.”