Dry The River- New band of the day

Dry The River
Hometown: East London.
The lineup: Pete Liddle (vocals, guitar), Matt Taylor (guitar), Scott Miller (bass), Will Harvey (violin), Jon Warren (drums).



DTR, like Mumford & Sons, know how to construct an infectious semi-acoustic ditty. Their songs, some of them collated on an EP entitled Bible Belt, have a sort of late-19th century American frontier ambience, with references to medicine men and intimations of creeping danger, but that doesn't stop them lodging in your skull. Norwegian songwriter Peter Liddle apparently draws inspiration from the stuff he studied at college, namely Medicine and Anthropology. What began as a solo venture became a band once Liddle recruited "homeless punk-rock drummer" Jon Warren and classically trained violinist William Harvey.
You can't tell from DTR's songs that Warren was once homeless (nor that Liddle is Norwegian), although they do start off acoustically and mournfully before becoming more brisk and jaunty, usually around the one-minute mark, which is hardly punk rock but certainly the energy-flow increases as time goes on. And the violin thing is self-evident – their tunes are doused in Harvey's playing, and in one, Family Tree (which sounds like Nirvana's Lithium with a folkie on the mic), his pizzicato plucking provides the rhythm. Shaker Hymns is another giveaway title – they clearly love Fleet Foxes, but beware: Liddle's choirboy-with-tonsillitis tones are an acquired taste, or rather, a flavour you may not savour for long. But you can see why there's a fuss around DTR, especially on New Ceremony, with its festival crowd-pleasing chorus ("Shine a little light, don't wrestle with the night, don't think about the future ...") which makes us think of Bends-era Radiohead played by buskers who've just been given an amp for Christmas.