While it might be better known for the likes of Fatboy Slim, The Kooks and 80’s Matchbox B-line Disaster, Brighton is quietly developing a new folk scene to rival any city in the UK. And we aren’t talking the coffee table smugness school of folk that the likes of Adem insist on peddling, nor the one man/woman with a guitar that gets plastered across our tv’s and sunday supplements then used to sell us butter. This is folk that scares or unsettles you, a way of passing on stories and legends. The figures of Birdengine and Mary Hampton both deliver dark brooding folk music with a passion and with lyrics to chill you to the bone. Add to that the instrumental magnificence of -A+M and the massed tribes of the Willkommen Collective (of which Sons of Noel and Adrian are a part) and you realise the city is really very lucky, even as it stands to be invaded by a couple of thousand drunken morons for the beach party in September. In most other cities, this would be considered a ‘scene’, but with so many various micro-scenes, there is no cohesive ‘Brighton sound’ as yet.

Sons of Noel and Adrian, is, at it’s roots, two men. Tom Cowan (son of Adrian) and Jacob Richardson (son of Noel). Live, and on record they can be anything up to 14, pulling in various members of the Willkommen Collective (which includes The Miserable Rich, Shoreline, The Leisure Society and Moonshine Moonshine). In allowing this flexibility to membership they are able to be at once stripped down and epic, as evidenced by ‘Damien/ Lesson’s From What’s Poor’, when they break from a hypnotic piano part accompanied by soaring strings before stripping everything back to just two guitars and a male and female vocal duet. For the most part the music here is built up from the interplay of Tom and Jacob’s tumbling guitars, slowly building and adding found sounds, lush strings, upright piano, accordion to create a melancholy baroque folk sound that, by their own admission puts them in danger of being placed in the ‘progressive folk niche’. Throw in a little sea shanty, and a fondness for the sixties folk revival and the likes of Anne Briggs and Dick Gaughan (or at least I suspect that is the case) and you are halfway there. Listening to the album there are also hints of early Palace or Early Herman Dune and americana in the mix as well. Much of the melancholy and sinister undertones of the record are provided by Richardson’s brooding baritone, which acts as the main vocal throughout. When juxtaposed with female vocals as on the dizzying ‘Indigo’ and ‘Divorce’, Richardson’s words are allowed to stretch out, and become even more arresting as they weave in and out of the often hypnotic layers of sounds.

There is much in this debut to get excited about, and having experienced the live show on a number of occasions it shouldn’t be too long before the dark longings of Sons of Noel and Adrian’s intoxicating brew of chamber music, folk revivalism and hints of americana begin to get the acclaim they deserve.
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Sons of Noel and Adrian Live:
Brighton Concorde 2 - August 8th
Mosely Folk Festival - August 30th
London Catch Bar - September 3rd
End of the Road Festival - September 12th

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