Adele and Scott are scrutinising the hotel bar menu. Ms Bethel and Mr Paterson, the boyfriend/girlfriend half of Sons And Daughters, are on a punishing schedule but have agreed to a natter during their lunch break. In town on the promo treadmill for their latest long-player, This Gift, the pair are in fine fettle, if a little peckish. Having settled on a sensible veggie pasta (Adele) and a not-so-sensible calorific fish and chips (Scott) we get down to business.
The new album is arguably their most accomplished to date, a sonic departure eschewing the dark folk-punk of its predecessor, The Repulsion Box, for pseudo-60s girl group pop sensibilities. At the production helm was ex-Suede guitarist Bernard Butler, who recently worked with Duffy and Cajun Dance Party.
“It was really important to us to work with a songwriter,” explains Adele. “We'd been sitting on about 30 songs for a year-and-a-half. We needed someone to come in and tell us which ones were good and which ones weren’t, which he did, quite harshly. There was quite a lot of tension between Scott and Bernard.”
“We’re both very pig-headed and both have really strong opinions,” Scott observes. “It made it very, very tense in the studio but I think he likes that. He loves Martin Hannett, the Joy Division producer. That's a classic example of tension in the studio that produced a beautiful record. He would create the tension and then press record.”
Adele continues, “He said he was going to give us confidence because we didn’t have any. He would say, ‘Why are there no egos in this band? Why does nobody speak up? You’re a rock and roll band!’”
Sounds a bit like bootcamp.
“Yes, Bernard Butler bootcamp!” laughs Adele.
One adjective that has reared its head in numerous reviews of This Gift is “accessible”. Was this a consideration for the band when making the record?
“Not accessibility but certainly pop sensibility,” muses Adele. “People think we're a very serious band,” notes Scott. “When we were writing we listened to a lot of Motown, soul music and Blondie, we love music like that. The Smiths and The Velvet Underground had really great pop songs too. They also had a melancholy and darkness to the lyrics, which we wanted to do as well.”
Case in point, current single, ‘Darling’. The upbeat, sassy pop nugget was inspired by the ’60s film of the same title starring Julie Christie as a woman who leaves her true love to marry for power and status.
Adele resumes, “It strikes a chord with today’s culture where celebrity couples on reality television shows essentially sell their relationships. It really devalues love.”
The single also features a remix by none other than Richie Egan.
“We love the Jape remix,” she enthuses.
“Our drummer Dave knows him. Dave played with David Kitt for a while,” says Scott, explaining the origin of the project.
The first single from the album, 'Gilt Complex', had a novel cover as the B-Side, namely Adamski’s ‘Killer’.
“We were in rehearsals writing one last song for the record and we were trying to plagiarise ‘Papa Was A Rolling Stone’,” recalls Scott. “We realised quite quickly that the bassline was ‘Killer’ by Adamski. We listened to it and there's a line: ‘All our sons and daughters already know how that feels’.”
“It was fate,” smiles Adele.
“It’s not an ironic cover but it is a bit of a pisstake of the new rave thing,” Scott points out.
“We’re not fans of new rave,” says Adele, shaking her head.
We pass a few moments discussing the injustice of The Klaxons winning the Mercury Prize, which brings us to another low point of 2007, the NME versus Morrissey debacle. The band toured as his support act in 2006 and are long-time fans.
“I think it’s absolute bullshit,” spits Scott.
“It’s disgusting, just to try and sell a music paper on the back of it. It’s obvious to anyone with half a brain cell that it’s not true. It’s so tabloidy,” adds Adele.
When quizzed about touring with one of her teenage heroes Adele glows: “He was lovely. He's very private but very warm. We met him a couple of times and he was really nice and funny, just a real gentleman.”
As Adele and Scott’s lunch arrives I bid the duo farewell, as charmed by them as they were by Steven Patrick.