Dry the River.

This is me very much jumping on Andrew Moon's bandwagon, but that isn't to say I didn't appreciate this band before, I just may have slightly dismissed them, that's all. Moon's post on them can be seen as part of his Glastonbury psyche-up on his Tumblr.

Since listening to Dry the River on our voyage to Glastonbury (via Sidmouth and Bodmin) and then having them technically open my Glastonbury, I can't help but perhaps fall in love with them slightly. I want to begin by saying that they sound much better live than they do on recordings, the energy that they bring to their relatively soft music is beautiful, which is one of the reasons why I'm writing about them now.

I suppose that I am also using this post to have a cheeky nerdgasm over the way the iTunes festival is streamed this year. I thought last year was brilliant because they showed everything rather than lame edits (which in my experience is often what happens with recordings of live music, Glastonbury coverage is terrible for example). However, I had a few issues with their use of Myspace, the first being that nobody uses Myspace anymore and the second was that you couldn't re-watch performances if you happened to be out, so the use of iTunes and being able to watch the performances 'on-demand' is much better, especially seeing as tickets are like gold-dust (she says despite winning tickets for Saturday and Sunday, but just not going out of laziness).
But anyway, to demonstrate how good I thought Dry The River were, I was half-planning, if I hadn't given my tickets away, to just go to see them and duck out on the Manic Street Preachers. I'm also putting this on record that I think that iTunes' policy about 'not sharing' is very unfair, I didn't sell them because I'm not a dick so I don't see the problem. I also didn't win the tickets through the official channel, but that's another story. Also I didn't technically break any rules due to the fact that Moon's brother ended up not going anyway.

Dry the River currently have a single out called, 'No Rest', which is really good but I would recommend you test the waters with the free download they are offering to people that sign up to their mailing list, it's probably my favourite. Arguably Dry the River are within the same vein as Mumford & Sons, but they just aren't. This is coming from a huge Mumford & Sons fan, although overall there is no need for me to justify that, to me, the two sound completely different. However, there's almost no doubt that when Dry the River get snapped up, the mighty Mumford & Sons are who they will compared to, despite their completely different musical and vocal styles. Use of similar instruments, yes; way the similar instruments are used, no.

As a relatively new - although I use the term loosely - band, there is very little in the way of singles to download, however, I am awaiting their debut album with high anticipation due to what I heard at Glastonbury, it's all pretty much solid and good. There are a number of songs to listen to via their Youtube channel though. Here is the eerie video for their new single, 'No Rest'.

Make sure you check out their website and 'fan them' on Facebook, I'm fairly certain that if they're not big, they're going to have a great summer. The BBC already seem interested as demonstrated by an exclusive set at Glastonbury for BBC Introducing - Noah and the Whale also played this and both bands told their fans what was going on and in the end it seemed to be VIP only so we ended up only hearing the beginning of Dry the River over the fence; they also officially played BBC Introducing last year. Finally, if you get the chance also take a look at their iTunes Festival perfomance, I promise/hope that you won't be disappointed. If you're looking to see them in the flesh, they seem to be playing every other festival, including Reading & Leeds, as well as playing a fair number of gigs once the 'festival season' ends (including New Slang in Kingston on 15th September, hint if anyone wants to spend £6 on me).