For Foes, the debut album from Derry son-writing pair, Sullivan and Gold (Adam Montgomery and Ben Robinson) is not, praise be, a record over-burdened with angst and look-at-me theatrics. Yes, it swells and pulses. However, it’s subtle too, even slippery in places – with interesting shades and detours and, most significantly, an atypical lyrical approach.

“There’s a character that pops up throughout the album,” explains Adam.  “We look at their life, their relationships, the problems and tragedies they become involved in. You need to get a bit of experience behind you to write the kind of songs we’re aiming towards. Writing about, or from the perspective of another character, is a way of doing that as well. It’s funny, writing from another perspective allows the songs to develop legs and run off in directions you wouldn’t expect. I found it really easy, to be honest, once I took myself out of the equation. It opened things up.”
Sullivan and Gold are hardly a typical signing for Derry label (and home of Fighting With Wire and LaFaro), Smalltown America. But look at Little Bear, a similarly ‘low-lit’ outfit who’ve emerged this year.
“When Andrew (Ferris) first spoke to us, that was what he said,” Adam reveals. “They’re still releasing great punk records, and working with great punk bands – but they’ve also branched off in other directions. They want to vary things, shake it up. That’s a really exciting thing to be involved in.”
If that’s raising the duo’s pulse-rate, so too is their continued presence in Derry, amongst what’s starting to seem like a vintage crop of local talent.
“To be able to record an album, and to work with people as gifted as Conor – all within a few miles of where I live – it’s amazing,” Adam beams. “We needed a bit of time to get the record right and find out what kind of sound we wanted. Having the studio on our doorstep was really important to that.”
And the City of Culture?
“As someone who wasn’t born there, but moved in a few years ago, I have to say the atmosphere has changed an awful lot. It’s great to see a city with such a long history celebrate itself. And music is central to it all. It’s been fantastic. And with Soak, Little Bear and so many other brilliant acts... well, hopefully it’s going to kick on.
“We’ve no grand plans for the album,” he adds. “We’re not reinventing the wheel. We just want to do something. Personally, I’d be happy enough to have someone I didn’t know come up to me in the street and tell me they liked it. We’ve both got our own lives going on. We just want to write songs and play them.”
 
For Foes is released by Smalltown America on November 25