Dry The River

Dry the River
October 2011

“I think people are surprised when they come to see us live.” says Peter Liddle, heavily tattooed frontman of London’s Dry the River. “They expect us to be really calm and quiet but in some ways we’re the opposite.”

You can see why people get confused: this five-piece band has all the hallmarks of the latest folk sensation: elemental name, beards, acoustic guitars, even a violinist. But what sets Dry the River apart is a background in hardcore and post-punk bands, hence the tattoos, lyrics that read like a Steinbeck novel and a sonic palette that sweeps from gentle to giant like an incoming storm. “Emo has become a term of derision, but originally it meant emotive hardcore – all these DC bands like Indian Summer, Rites of Spring, Antioch Arrow who wanted to move away from political music to express personal things in an intense and energetic way. They screamed and cried in their sets and more often than not sounded like an amplified food blender,” says Liddle. “but the underlying idea is cool: although it’s important to play with passion, I believe that there should be an emotional underpinning to all music and all performance."

Dry the River’s origins lie with Liddle. Born in Norway to British parents, his early life was a shifting one thanks to his father’s work as an engineer in the oil industry. Ever-changing homes and schools gave Liddle a peculiar set of reference points: "I think I have a fixation with community and belonging, because that wasn’t something I had as a child." And though his parents are only “quietly religious,” Liddle became fascinated by the iconography and language of the Roman Catholic Church at one of his many primary schools, where his voice was honed in the school choir. Though he’s not overtly religious, religious symbolism creeps into Dry the River’s lyrics, not least in Bible Belt and Shaker Hymns. “I think if you play with King James’ vocab, it accesses a solemnity; something deep within people,” says the Leonard Cohen inspired singer. “It sets a tone that says, This is some serious shit.”

By the time Liddle returned to Newbury as a teenager, he and the various members of Dry the River – guitarist Matthew Taylor and violinist Will Harvey, plus Scott Miller (bass) and Jon Warren (drums) – were crossing paths in various bands on the DIY scene centred around Southampton, Reading and Newbury’s Waterside Youth Centre. “It was this cool, grimy little venue,” says the singer. “You could rehearse there, and they always put on local bands alongside touring artists, which really helped cultivate the scene. It meant you could sell out a decent venue with your 16 year old punk band.”

University took Liddle first to Bristol, where he studied anthropology, and then to London’s Kings College, where he enrolled in medical school. “I don’t know if I wanted to save lives in a hands-on way,” he muses. “I saw myself more as a lab doctor than a people doctor. You know, spending a lot of time in a white coat looking down a microscope. I think in some ways I also wanted to look illness and mortality in the eye, to see how things like human dissection would affect me.” Throughout his first degree, music had been a major distraction: “I was off touring with bands while I was writing my anthropology dissertation,” he says. “I would do stupid things like take three weeks off uni and not tell the lecturers.” At medical school, with ten years of band experience behind him, he resolved to put music on the back burner and focus on his studies. But in spite of his best efforts, the acoustic guitar in the corner was calling.  Liddle started writing folky material in his hall of residence room and, on summer break, called on those old friends from the Reading scene – by now all living in London – to