Listen: Drenge – Backwaters [Best Fit Exclusive]

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Drenge’s 2012 demos ‘Dogmeat’ and ‘People In Love Make Me Feel Yuck’, were mere skipping stones of concentrated fuzzy, fuck you rock ‘n roll, compared to this year’s apocalyptic asteroid-sized debut, ‘Bloodsports’.

Crowned Zane Lowe’s Hottest Record in the World on Radio 1 just moments ago, new single, ‘Backwaters’, will firmly place the brothers Loveless, and their spittle-soaked work into critical context.

In all likelihood, said context will be ‘GUITAR MUSIC REVIVAL’. The painfully clumsy and shamelessly bland pseudo-genre recycled across pop criticism every year. A throwaway tag in most cases but – if/when applied here – an insult to the considered depth of Drenge’s scratchy, gut-busting guitar tones on this ode to shit towns up and down the UK. They’ve got the two-piece dynamic totally nailed down now: Eoin attends to guitar-god solos, Rory rains down upon his kit with eye-wincing ferocity. ‘Backwaters’ bounds along on a QOTSA rifling combo of rubbery guitar, tinny snare whips and open hi-hats.The duo bare their bloodied gums at the 1.50 mark; a snarling crunching riff compliments their warped harmonies, a sort of slit-throat gurgling, ‘I got missin’ teethhh, gotta lot of those’.

‘Backwaters’ culminates with Eoin’s cold, calculated baritone cutting across the malaise of feedback and ‘verb like a rebellious loudhailer announcement; it’s a call to arms in the ‘guitar music’ nanny state, a one-fingered salute to all the patronizing penmen who have uttered that slovenly term in the last twelve months. These Loveless boys aren’t interested in serving as kindling for your ‘revival’. Hell, they’re interested in little more than carving their names into the garage-rock Wall of Fame with broken beer bottles. Cherish them.