It's our favourite track off the sublime Dry The River debut (which we reviewed here) and we love this canine-themed cover art, definitely one the band's more darkly ersatz moments and wonderfully at odds with the up-beat anthemicness of the track itself.
British folk music – the great ambassador of a nation these days courtesy of bands like Mumford & Sons. Ever since Dry The River began making tentative movements within the industry, people were quick to liken them with Mumford – and while it’s true they bear much in common, Dry The River offer a far richer palate of sounds, deftly coupled with a keen knowledge of great pop hooks. Their tracks feel looser, freer, and more spacious. It’s like the gates to England’s green pastures have been opened wide and the band given liberty to sow and reap their sustenance.
And what wonders they have grown. As an album, Shallow Bed is the richest of broths, a hearty concoction of good honest songwriting, guitar lines that shine out like the brightest of stars and string sections that swell and rise like the pulse of a living body. If that body be England’s own spirit, then Dry The River are the coursing sweep of its energies leaping out to all corners of its dimensions, and in the tapestry of material presented on the band’s debut, it welcomes all to its fold.
You don’t get pop more sweetly rounded than the likes of History Book and New Ceremony (two of the best tracks on the album) – all sugared harmonies and arts-n’-crafts jaunty cheer. They’re the kind of songs to lay out full-pelt come the Jubilee, long tables strewn down the road and people gathered round to share in lovely old fashioned companionship. Bible Belt is equally charming, beautiful too – a lover’s ballad of uncomplicated romance and emotion. Dry The River’s music goes beyond twee upkeepings of appearance and quaint gifts, it’s the stuff at the heart of what love really is – that gut feeling that sweeps you up in its arms and tugs you down a path you can’t resist.
Lead single The Chambers & The Valves plays like the band’s calling card – a neatly composed three minute presentation of everything the rest of the album then goes on to explore. The almost tortured cries of ‘I loved you in the best way possible’ on No Rest function to similar effect, a heart-wrenching swipe at our feelings, and we’re thrown head-first into a love story we can all engage with. Big, rough-handed percussion give the songs an earthiness, and those everyman vocals that seem like more than just a singular individual, but instead an amassed collective of spirited yearning.
Yearning for what? For life. The essence of life itself. And a profusely natural, organic depiction of life at that. The lush minimalism of Demons is Dry The River at their most pastoral – a word that seems inescapable when summarising what the band’s sound encompasses, but the only one that really does it full justice. The track, like so many of Dry The River’s best moments, builds from small, village-like beginnings to an impassioned, forceful crescendo that breaks over the soul like a wash of birds’ beating wings. There’s a feathered elegance to Dry The River’s message, a moral capacity for empathy that strikes across all audiences – varied enough to appease the indie crowd, but with the precision and composure to sweeten the tooth of the pop lover.
The piano balladry of Family moves on to emphasise the values of home. Timeless, enduring concepts. There’s moments when every part of the band’s sound comes to bear – guitar, strings, brass, vocals – all slamming home at once. You’re knocked to your knees, not in submission – for Shallow Bed is never overpowering – but in the awe of raw adulation. In its near seven-minute glory, Lion’s Den is the apotheosis of this side to the band – a grandiose epic of truly baroque scales. The soaring guitar solos that underpin its sprawling outro are the stuff heaven is stitched from.
It takes skill to craft a good album, but it takes craftsmanship of artisan-like levels to go beyond that and create a debut record worthy of proper, acknowledging respect. Shallow Bed is one such album.
For the past month or so, there's been one CD that's been back on my stereo again and again - the Dry The River album sampler. I'd be the first to admit I'm not always the biggest fan of guitar bands, and hold a particular dislike for Mumford & Sons (or what they stand for at any rate) - who Dry The River have been compared to on numerous occasions.
But for me, Dry The River excel on every level that Mumford don't. Where Mumford so often idle in a stale landscape of landed gentrification and overwraught, treacle-like songs, Dry The River feel infinitely more vital - a more engaged, energetic band to hold the banner aloft in the new year.
With the weight of the prestigious BBC Sound of 2012 now resting on their shoulders, all eyes are set on the band and their forthcoming album Shallow Bed to see if they can measure up to the hype. And in tracks like album standout New Ceremony, they match every expectation and then go some way further.
From those fuzzy guitar hooks that cuddle the opening bars of Peter's Liddles almost lullaby-like vocals right through to the starry-night barn dance string sections, New Ceremony comes on filmic in its scale and bursting with a passion far larger than the band itself.
It's the chorus where the song shines at its most intense though - like another of the album's best moments, No Rest - one of Dry The River's greatest qualities is their ability to leap from one tempo to another mid-track in a sprawling feat of musical athleticism that sweeps the listener along in a dash of emotions and blurry adoration.
It's as if the song is a sole boat caught amidst the stormiest of seas, teetering on the brink of a mile-high wave - caught on that cusp of peril and adventurous dering'do - before plummeting head on into the unknown. The result is profoundly exhilarating, a bracing wash of shivvering musical pleasure.
I've long lamented the current lack of guitar bands able to write a decent pop hook, but Dry The River certainly have landed on the knack, with New Ceremony as the jewel in the album's crown. That chorus is the kind of pure, refined brilliance even the great Gary Barlow would be proud to call his own.
Soaring above the spires of towns and down across the plains, roads and railways of the land, it floats on and on - a rallying call to arms. And one, when Shallow Bed is released in March, will be answered in its droves.
