Fresh from a trip to Europe they’d returned from just the previous day, joking how they’d had a Greggs and a can of lager for breakfast, English alternative rock band Dry the River played the O2 Academy Leeds as part of the Live at Leeds Festival that saw around 200 musicians play in venues across Leeds City Centre last weekend.
Second on the bill at 2:45 in the afternoon the band opened with ‘Alarms in the Heart’, the opening track of their 2014 album of the same name. Unfortunately the PA cut halfway through their performance of their second track ‘Family’ from their 2012 album ‘Shallow Bed’, though the band powered through until the end of the track. There seemed to be massive problems when it came to rectifying the situation, with bassist Scott Miller having a joke and expressing his frustration about the situation with the crowd, even pretending to throw his guitar in anger. Though this did result in the band standing at the end of the stage to perform a beautiful unamplified and acoustic version of ‘Weights and Measures’, also from the ‘Shallow Bed’ album, so i’m definitely not complaining!
Lucky for the crowd who weren’t as close to the stage so missed out on hearing ‘Weights and Measures’, the band said that they had time for one more track after performing ‘Vessels’, so performed ‘Weights and Measures’ again, though this time amplified and with the full band.
Dry the River’s set was incredible, and lead singer Peter Liddle’s vocals were hauntingly stunning. It was also lovely to see a band handle technical difficulties affecting their set so well. I for one will definitely be catching a Dry the River show in the future.
