When former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler was asked to produce the third album by Sons & Daughters, he had bold transformations in mind.

"I thought that they had a lot of drama and passion but it needed channelling," he says. "And in a way I felt that the band's strong image could hold them back, like they might be trying to fit into a genre they had created. Sons & Daughters are a cool bunch of people but I didn't really want them to be cool."

You can sort of understand how Butler got this impression. Centred around real-life couple Adele Bethel and Scott Patterson, the Glasgow four-piece sing sexually charged songs about destructive relationships with impeccable style (false eyelashes and stacked hair) and an impeccable frame of reference (the music of Lee Hazlewood, Leonard Cohen and The Smiths, the literature of Alasdair Gray, Emily Dickenson and Sylvia Plath).

They had already released two albums of raw, chiming blues rock, and in 2005 were chosen to support Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds at Alexandra Palace.

"I think Bernard thought we had some indie-er than thou mentality," says Bethel. "I'd say, We want to keep this bit in 'cos it sounds like Smog' and he'd go, Smog? Who gives a f*** about Smog!' But I also have Girls Aloud on my iPod and I'm not ashamed to admit it. We had already made a conscious decision to make a pop record."

Pop for these purposes, as Bethel clarifies, is more Breeders than Westlife. Holed up in a remote Scottish village where hares danced on the lawn at dawn and the locals stared at them "like something out of An American Werewolf In London", the band came up with a set of brassy, driving and highly addictive tracks which will be released as This Gift early next year.

Once the tender foil to Aidan Moffat's unromantic mumblings in Scottish lo-fi favourites Arab Strap, Bethel is experienced at probing the dark core of domestic relationships. But this time, after several years of happy cohabitation with Paterson, she preferred to tell others' tales.

So Gilt Complex is about "car-crash celebrity culture", The Nest was inspired by a Ken Loach film about homelessness, Flags and Iodine address a friend who was self-harming and the title track was prompted by a newspaper article about Assia Wevill, Ted Hughes' other, less well-known lover, who also committed suicide.

"There's always something interesting to be made of the relationship between two people, no matter how f***** up it is," says Bethel. "In fact, the more so the better! It's been a real test of me and Scott's relationship being together 24/7 not to drive each other absolutely mad. It is very odd and intense. You do get the odd day when you want to kill the other person but I think everyone gets that, don't they?"

Despite the initial tension, Bethel credits Butler with "pushing us to the limits in terms of performing" and the band eventually bonded with their producer over a shared love of The Smiths.

"He brought in one of Johnny Marr's guitars for Scott to play," Bethel says. "We thought about stealing it but he was gonna know it was us, wasn't he? We've got lots of photos of us holding it with big cheesy grins which we're going to put up on MySpace though. Actually we met him ourselves recently at a festival and he said he really liked us. We got the thumbs up from the Marr!"

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  • For review see The Argus on November 8 or visit www.theargus.co.uk/music