Shallow Bed

From its very conception Shallow Bed was always destined to trace the line between total unoriginality and just-for-the-sake-of-it gimmickry – it was an album damned either to drown in endless, unfavourable comparison or burn with ridicule for some perceived self-indulgence – it was an album that would never live up to its award-laden, critically acclaimed predecessors, that would be filled with tracks persistently tainted by their listeners’ preconceptions and would struggle to adequately place itself within the ever-expanding confines of ‘folk’. Shallow Bed, unfortunately, was always going to be the youngest child of the family – constantly striving to live up to its older brothers, constantly competing and admiring and idolising. It was destined to be the child for whom duplication is the only path to individuality.

And it’s true – Shallow Bed could stagnate in a pool of endless comparison if you let it. If you were inclined, it might be simple to argue that Dry The River combine the soaring pastoral vistas of Fleet Foxes with the old-world love-psalms of Stornoway. It might be even easier to link them with the earthen, world-weary, steel-strung grandeur of Goldheart Assembly’s Wolves and Thieves, or the fellow-Londoners’ forlorn lyricism. If you wanted, you might even take Fleet Foxes, Stornoway, Goldheart Assembly, Mumford and Sons, and Leonard Cohen and blend them together to until you were left with the gooey primeval ooze of Shallow Bed – all bible-belt love-stories, strummed-out laments and familial ballads. It would just be so damn easy.

Thing is, it would do a great disservice to the Sound of 2012-nominated fellas to so flippantly palm them off like that. Dry The River have perfected the knack of compelling, story-sculpting lyricism. These tracks hum with the echoes of past loves, they crunch with young rebellion and they swoon with nostalgia. They may not capture youth and joy and nature with the same clarity as Fleet Foxes and they may not be as heart-achingly poetic as Bon Iver, but every phrase that frontman Peter Liddle sends soaring into the stratosphere seems bristling with raw, pent-up, beautiful emotion.

**MP3:** ‘Weights & Measures’
**Similar to:** Goldheart Assembly, Mumford and Sons, Stornoway