Album review: Sons Of Noel And Adrian

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3 / 10 Forcing the pastoral aesthetic of English folk to accommodate the bombast of prog and the right angles
of experimentalism, this Brighton collective’s debut breaks under the weight of its own pretension. The hideous hey-nonny-nonny-ing of 10-minute epic ‘Daniel, Lessons From What’s Poor’ makes you wish Noel and Adrian had strung up their spawn from the nearest maypole. Likewise, the droning ‘Divorce’ tips the record into indulgent heart-wankery. It appears Sons want to rip the heart out of traditionalism and wash it down with cider, but the bizarre flash of modernist atonality at the end of ‘Cave’ isn’t nearly as avant-garde as they think; it sounds like a second-rate Arcade Fire in Hunter Wellingtons. Depressing.

Louise Brailey

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