Biography
Originating their name from a Nick Cave album bearing a comparable title, the Good Sons assembled in 1992 and steadily built support throughout the Manchester and Preston districts of England where the members originated. Their first album, Singing the Glory Down, arrived in 1995 and earned favorable notices from reviewers as well as from the alt-country audience then active across Great Britain. Fronted by Michael Weston King, who had gained early experience in Liverpool during the late 1970s and early 1980s, the band carved a place in the British marketplace as practitioners of Americana marked by admiration for Ronnie Lane. They would likewise soon attract American listeners through melodies that blended jangle with drive and through King’s aptitude for emotionally direct songwriting. Singing the Glory Down included a guest turn by Townes Van Zandt, who shared vocals with King on “Riding on the Range,” a song the artist would later interpret alone, much to its author’s gratitude, as a solo recording shortly before his death. Their next release, The Kings Highway, took a noticeably quieter direction under a pronounced Van Zandt influence and drew on material composed while King worked as a folk troubadour. In 1997 the group issued the rowdier Wines, Lines, and Valentines, which their American label Watermelon Records, uneasy about the title’s cocaine reference, later issued in the United States as Angels in the End. A tour-bus accident in 1998 left King’s health and the band’s finances severely damaged, and before the year ended, following Watermelon Records’ bankruptcy filing, their manager departed for other prospects. The group nevertheless emerged from that period of obscurity, first through King’s 1999 solo album God Shaped Hole, a set of spare and somber pieces that reflected on those difficult months, and then with their fourth album, Happiness, which appeared in 2001.
Albums
