MUSIC REVIEW: FATHERSON – Sum Of All Your Parts

Fatherson are an alt-rock trio from Glasgow, and “Sum Of All Your Parts” is their third album. The band members have known each other since primary school and have been playing together from the age of 14 – each album portrays the closeness of their friendship. “Sum Of All Your Parts” naturally picks straight up from “Open Book” (released in 2016) which shows the mastery of the band’s musical fluidity.

The album artwork literally screams emotional expression as petals of a giant flower bloom out of a character’s mouth. There’s a note of unpredictability here that speaks to the different turn “Sum Of All Your Parts” takes from the previous albums. While the two singles “Making Waves” and “Charm School” are pop and up-beat, the other tracks ground the album. Working with an outside producer (Claudius Mittendorfer: Muse, Arctic Monkeys) for the first time, this album is definitely influenced by Mittendorfer’s style as strings are used to evoke a strong undercurrent of emotion.

“Sum Of All Your Parts” carries an ease that feels like you could be listening to a soundtrack made to fit your own life. Each song has the narrative ability to be one of those melodies that suits every day living, whether you’re riding a cramped subway car alone listening to “Rain”, coming or leaving a daunting date replaying “Making Waves”, or relaxing with your friends with “Charm School” playing in the background.

The opening track “Rain” starts with a moving piano riff, before coming in with “you sleep in the exit rows, when there is a problem, you’ll be the first to know”. This poetic scenario came from an early flight the band were taking, as they were assigned the roomier exit row allowing them to get some shut-eye on the journey. This shows the extent of the lyrical heartrending throughout the album that demonstrates the beauty in life’s most mundane moments.

Poetic lyrics are taken literally in “OhYes”. The song leads with a minute and a half of bass and vocal intro before leading into the instrumental section that is layered with a poem by the English Poet, Isaiah Hull. Talking about it, lead singer Ross Leighton describes it as the song that wrote itself, claiming it was probably created in 20 minutes! The words “living with their eyes shut, tripping over eggshells and trying their best” ironically tells the story of people who feel invisible. Hull emphasises this feeling with his poem depicting his own invisible feelings as “just a slob behind a property lot with a lot to say”.

The tracks were recorded in the sequence of the track listing, so by the time “Build A Wall” came to be the synth had been ramped up. Ending on a strong note the last two lines of the song beautifully tie the album together with, “and everyone I know thinks I’m wrong, it’s greater than the sum of all your parts”.