Listen, when a band of raging UK indie rockers decides, “you know what, let’s turn it down,” you either get a boring filler track or something truly special. The Entitled Sons, a Somerset-based indie group of brothers, have given up their usual festival set of energetic anthems for something a bit more personal on their new release Epitaph (Not There).
The track, which sounds suspiciously like it was written in the aftermath of a long late-night conversation over a pint, trades in the usual rock band grandeur for something more stripped-back and raw. There are no cinematic metaphors or well-worn rock band tropes about living life on the edge, just a devastating look at loss and survivor’s guilt, re-living phone calls to a friend, and wishing you’d picked up the phone when they called.
It’s all quiet acoustic guitar picking and a fragile-sounding but powerful vocal performance, with even the most unguarded moments in the vocal delivery serving as dramatic peaks. But then it all opens up and bursts out at 2:40 with a burst of electric guitars and drums, as if the narrator is finally losing their composure. Even in the context of a more bombastic arrangement, the gentle strumming of the acoustic guitar provides a grounding, almost guiding backbone to the performance.
I’m not sure what the band’s usual approach is to writing songs, but for the last year, they’ve been hand-screening their own merch, touring the country in independent venues, building an impressive word-of-mouth following (we’ve been getting a ton of comments on social media asking us to keep an eye out for them), and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. The band could have easily jumped on the well-trodden path of anthemic stadium anthems that most of their contemporaries seem so obsessed with, but they left it all in the mix, even the occasional muttered conversations and room noises.
It doesn’t sound like a single for a major label looking to appeal to adult contemporary radio listeners. It’s far too raw and personal for that. It’s the sound of a real band, not a polished corporate product. If you’re a fan of this style of music, you should definitely give it a listen!
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An annoying guy! Self-proclaimed music head and writer since 2011. Armed with a university degree he rarely uses, Al skipped the 9-to-5 grind to dedicate his life to discovering and writing about independent music.
