Dry The River are a London-based folk-influenced indie five-piece who’ve caught the attention of the summer festival circuit and various factions of BBC radio over what looks like a busy 2010. Two of their members are originally from Newbury (nearly local), and they’re on tour in support of an excellent EP of beautifully depressing drinking songs – an EP which seems to have a different tracklisting depending on where and when you buy it, due to the band’s endearingly haphazard attitude to their own merchandise.
It’s either a sign of the strength of our musical scene or the product of spending too much time listening to local music, but I find it easy to describe them with comparison only to Oxford’s finest bands. The singer’s gracefully controlled falsetto voice is prominent, much like that of The Winchell Riots’ Phil McMinn, and, like the set as a whole, is delicate but not fragile: there’s no fey over-sensitivity or the kind of twee-folk that would fall to bits in a cold breeze. There are hints of Stornoway in the harmony vocals and violin, while the inventive and precise drumming seems to be cut from the same cloth as that of Ute’s wonderfully creative player. The spiky energy in the performance and the friendly inter-song banter have Spring Offensive written all over them, even to the point of the somewhat lanky singer bashing the drum kit’s cymbals for the closing song.
And, like all those locals, the songwriting in their set is absolutely solid. They open with the stunning ‘No Rest’, which builds from a fairly nondescript opening to a massive climactic chorus, and continue with songs that, while often downbeat and gentle at first glance, have plenty of weight and bite. There is copious Christian referencing throughout songs like ‘Shaker Hymns’, ‘Bible Belt’ and ‘Demons’, though the religion comes across as a search for a personal truth rather than any kind of bible-bashing or evangelical condescension. It’s all shot through with melancholy but never quite maudlin; their songs have the sadness of defeat while the performances are energetic and cathartic.
They’re a rightly confident band in their prime for whom great things are surely just around the corner, and it’s a delight to be able to catch them at that sweet-spot between shambolic novelty and jaded experience. They’ll be back soon, they say. I certainly hope so.