It Could Be Today is a lottery-tinged title that implies that good times are ahead. While we wait for our numbers to come up, we might as well listen to It Could Be Today, which is so sun-drenched, you’ll burn your hand if you touch the vinyl.
Henry and Reuben Vaun Smith – AKA Sons of Sevilla – originate from the West Yorkshire town of Featherstone, which was renowned for its production of coal. After listening to their third album It Could Be Today, you will find this fact as convincing as Dick Van Dyke’s accent in Mary Poppins. Dublin band The Thrills convinced the casual listener that they were from California, and Sons of Sevilla will do the same.
The very Californian-titled ‘Drive By Honey’ is built around two languid chords, and Reuben’s falsetto elevates the track from blissed out to fully fledged dream state. On title track ‘It Could Be Today’, funky guitars simmer and shimmer over a pounding beat, with flashes of strings and breathy backing vocals adding to the cool detective vibe. If Serge Gainsbourg and Marvin Gaye had collaborated on conveying the atmosphere of an August afternoon in Santa Monica Bay in 1969, it would probably sound something like ‘She Could Be Anywhere’. The track indicates a concern for a missing person, but the tone is so carefree, one can imagine the Vaun Smith brothers taking any bad news with the calmness of a monk sipping green tea.
If I told you that the ‘string-laden, funk bass-propelled’ ‘Midnight Glow’ is on the Shaft soundtrack, you would believe me. ‘I Can Depend On You’ sounds a little like Van Morrison being glad to be alive. ‘You Left Me Cold’ begins with a fuzzy, lumbering riff, and is soon accompanied by more falsetto and squelching keyboard. One to play while making a well-deserved ciabatta roll after completing a serious of long-delayed yet unexpectedly straightforward administrative tasks. Similarly, ‘Dance Alone’ is funk that deserves terrible yet satisfying dance moves while no one’s watching.
‘Anyone But The Right One’ is described by the band’s PR as ‘classic ’60s blue-eyed soul’, and while PR is by definition an exercise in shameless self-aggrandisement, you can’t dispute that the description is hammer colliding perfectly with nail’s head. ‘Jet Plane’ is, as the kids say, a groove, and comes with the instruction that it is only to be played while moving forward in an open top vehicle. It contains whistling, but not the irritating man in a garden centre kind. Funnily enough, the final track on the album is called ‘Colours Of The Garden’. It features analogue synths, Winehouse-like keyboard stabs, and what seems to be sounds of insects thriving in the background. One to play in the garden with friends who wear drapey white cotton shirts and hold their white wine glasses at all manner of angles, some of which are in the jaunty range.
It Could Be Today could have been made in 1971, shortly before Featherstone began to experience the economic decline from which it has never fully recovered. It’s an album that will take you away from your own economic woes and all your other woes. It’s less What’s Goin On and more What’s Happenin’, My Man? (or Woman – it is 2026, after all).
UK Tour Dates
October 7 – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
October 8 – The Abbey, Manchester
October 10 – The Hug & Pint, Glasgow
It Could Be Today is out now on Ubiquity Records
Sons of Sevilla: Bandcamp | Instagram | YouTube
Review by Neil Laurenson
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