Dry the River Talk Mumford & Sons, Religion and the 'The' in Their Name
Forget Foster the People, Young the Giant and Portugal, the Man. Indie folk-rock outfit Dry the River invented having "the" in the middle of your three-word band name.
"We just came up with something that was totally different, and now everyone's doing it. We invented it. We invented it, and now everyone's stolen it," frontman Pete Liddle tells Spinner with a laugh. "That's what happened."
Besides other bands copying their style, Dry the River been forced to deal with a number of other misunderstandings.
Being compared to gentle folk-rockers like Fleet Foxes, Mumford & Sons and Grammy award winners Bon Iver is one of them. For the sake of trend pieces the long-haired, heavy-bearded five-piece English unit frequently get lumped in with Mumford & Sons as part of a London folk scene. But Dry the River only poke around the fringes of that scene -- one that Mumford & Sons go to great lengths to say they're not part of.
"We came along at the tail end of this Mumford & Sons thing," Liddle says. "That's the weird thing with the east London folk scene -- nobody who's in it admits that they're in it. They all say that they're not. If you ask Mumford & Sons, they're just like 'We're not from that scene. We've got nothing to do with it,' and yet they basically invented it. That's the funny thing. With us, people are coming to realize we're from a completely different musical heritage, we're from a heavier background and we have a different approach -- it's grittier."
Liddle is surprisingly soft-spoken for a man who -- along with his bandmates -- comes from a raucous hardcore scene that
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