Mother & The Addicts

Much like their fellow Glaswegian dance-rock counterpart Franz Ferdinand, the stylish art-pop outfit Mother & the Addicts secured a distinctive place within the new wave revival by merging their wide-ranging influences—Half Man Half Biscuit, Orange Juice, and the Fall—with the glossy sounds of '80s mainstream radio acts such as Duran Duran and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, while adding a quirky layer of indie irony. Sam Smith, who performs as Mother, relocated from Brighton to Glasgow in 2003. Shortly after settling in, he circulated several demos created in varied styles and under multiple pseudonyms, one of which was an electro-focused recording credited to Duane Ready & the Robots, and soon secured a recording agreement with Chemikal Underground, the label also home to Arab Strap and Mogwai. He next confronted the challenge of assembling a live ensemble, which led him to drummer Ian Cronan and Cronan’s acquaintance Peter Vallely on bass. The pair connected with Douglas Morland and Kendall Koppe, a non-musician who handled sampling duties. Once the lineup was complete, the group entered Chem 19 studio intent on capturing an album that preserved the unpolished immediacy of the original three-song demo that had drawn the label’s interest. The resulting effort, Take the Lovers Home Tonight, appeared in 2005. Later that same year Koppe departed to focus on a career in photography, leaving the band to continue as a quartet that performed at the Indian Summer festival and the Glasgow School of Art Degree Show. Returning to the studio in 2007, they issued the more refined yet equally nostalgic Science Fiction Illustrated and brought in keyboardist and sampler Timothy Dyer to augment their subsequent live performances.