Drenge certainly pull in a diverse crowd to their shows these days. Prior to the band coming on stage for this sell-out gig, there was a group of 40-somethings in fairly new-looking leather jackets to my left, talking about Tom Watson MP (who famously recommended the band to Ed Miliband in a resignation letter), and to my right a group of teenagers, sniffing from a bottle of amyl nitrate and trying not to puke.
By the end of opening song, “People in Love Make Me Feel Yuck”, these two groups had very definitely moved apart. The teenagers had gravitated towards the stage and were throwing themselves around to sweaty abandon, while anybody who had even vaguely heard of the West Midlands Member of Parliament was gingerly shuffling towards the back of the room and out of the ruck. This is pretty much how things stayed until the Loveless brothers finally sloped off the stage a good 90 minutes later, after final tune, “Fuckabout”.
there’ll be another cracking album of primal, garage rock before too long
In between we were served up a tasty set of raw power that had more in common with the primal grunge of Californian duo, Deap Vally and Eighties US punk legends Big Black than the usual comparison of White Stripes. Drenge tore through the lion’s share of their 2013 self-titled album. “Gun Crazy” was followed by the razor-sharp “I Wanna Break You in Half”, before taking in other highlights, such as the viscious “Dogmeat” and strident “Bloodsports”. Throughout Eoin Loveless screamed and yelled and shook his guitar like he wanted to throttle it, while brother Rory pounded his drums into fierce submission.
It’s been some months since Drenge was let loose on an unsuspecting public, and it would seem that Eoin and Rory have not been spending the time sitting around staring into space. In addition to B-side “Necromance is Dead”, we also got plenty of fiery new songs, like “Running Wild”, that suggest that their first offering was no fluke and that there’ll be another cracking album of primal, garage rock before too long. The crowd were left clueless as to what these tunes are actually called though, as chat from the stage was not high on the agenda.
From time to time, a few individuals from the music press seem to get themselves in a flap about the lack of “real” rock ‘n’ roll around. Anyone who is presently going through such a self-imposed existential crisis should have been in Birmingham last night - this masterclass in snotty, teenage, high-octane rock music was something special to behold.
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