Anonymity is a troublesome thing: many acts who hide their faces from press photos, keeping their mouths firmly zipped in interviews, actually end up becoming less interesting. Because nearly every other bedroom-band likes to remain relatively mysterious, they all end up appearing vaguely similar. Electronic artists, granted, manage to achieve success through anonymity – Daft Punk most notably. And a more recent example of Keep Shelly In Athens, shows that it can work if executed properly.

The Son(s), a band whose songs are rich, organic, laden with progression and performance, shouldn’t have to rely on a dubious back-story in order to stake their claim as an interesting three-piece.

Their tale is thus: three men in Edinburgh play in a band. One disappears and goes on to make an apparent fortune in the movie industry. The second hibernates in a small commune in Oxford. The third retreats back to Edinburgh to record the very songs that make up this record.

As a back-story, this works better than “bored surfer kids from California, bought Garageband with their parents’ cash, recorded this lo-fi EP”. But it would be nice, albeit not essential, to know just how many people help make up this at times beautiful record.

Comprised of gentle folk rhythms; a dabbling in psychedelia; the occasional more streamlined and anthemic effort, The Son(s) debut is a varied and at times very accomplished introduction that works far better than a fad, fictional tale. Whoever happens to be behind the whimsical, smoker’s-lungs vocals has substantial ability; coming off like a pagan Gruff Rhys in go-and-get-’em opener ‘Dogs, Boys & Men’ and giving the required, lulling background to ‘Radar”s escapist, reverb-soaked guitars.

Your peak of interest arrives with ‘Sonny, You’ll Never Get That Ride;, a sickly, minimal offering that starts off as purposely uncomfortable, before evolving into a fantastically held-together closing-section, with the line “If we’re going down, we’re going down abandoned” sticking in your head minutes after the song’s climax.

Every so often the pace of the album becomes sluggish, leaving intelligent rhythm-sections to stagnate. The timing of ‘George & Harm’ – the album’s most immediate track – couldn’t be better. Succeeding the slight, soft pair of ‘There Is A Hole In The Middle Of The Sea…’ and ‘Count Your Feet’, it’s exactly what the listener requires: a pulsating, stirring effort, the most apt ‘single’ out of these eleven songs.

You can’t imagine any of the other tracks being released into the wide world on their own two feet. That’s merely because The Son(s) debut is so honorary to its original identity. Pastoral, placed high on the damp, Scottish hills, its unique, at times off-putting folk sound is the only straw we can clutch at in hope of finding out the minds behind this intriguing act.