Tom Watson, the Labour MP who played such an enjoyable role in stuffing Rupert Murdoch during the News of the World phone-hacking debacle, resigned last month as overseer of his party’s next election campaign. His parting letter to Ed Miliband ended not on the complexities of the ongoing squabble over who’d be the next MP for Falkirk, a tangled web which hastened his resignation, but with a musical tip. Watson suggested the Leader of the Opposition take a listen to rural Derbyshire duo Drenge. He called them “awesome”.
It seems then, that the band have friends in high places, a notion enhanced by their appearance on the Rolling Stones recent Hyde Park bill, as well as at Glastonbury and Latitude. Not bad for two brothers in their early twenties - Rory and Eoin Loveless – who thus far only have a couple of indie singles under their belt. It may well turn out that there was an inside man involved – that’s how both politics and the music industry work - but, in the meantime, their debut album makes a decent case for them.
Adopting a similar raucous, dirty, guitar’n’drums blues-rock attack to the Black Keys and Deap Vally (with whom they’ve toured), they add a snarling Stooges-like edge (albeit not as snarling as Iggy’s originals). The best of their debut album combines gritty, distorted rifferama, notably on the visceral thrust of the single “Backwaters”, with throwaway put-down lyrics such as the self-explanatory “I Wanna Break You in Half” which contains couplets such as “A minute of your time, I’d like to waste it/ Won’t miss you in the middle of the night, want you to hate it” (at least, I think that’s what he drawls).
It should be added that any band who have a song called “People in Love Make Me Feel Yuck”, and who arrive bearing such an inspired album cover, deserve a shot. Ed Miliband must hope people feel the same way about him.
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