When grunge’s lifeblood pooled into a sticky crime scene on Kurt Cobain’s floor 20 years ago this month, brothers Eoin and Rory Loveless were still in their nappies.
The duo has since graduated to the big-boy potty and formed a band called Drenge, which means “boys” in Danish—but which could easily be a conflation of “dredge” and “grunge,” for the U.K. group is frequently accused of exhuming Seattle’s corpus delicti.
The comparisons are not entirely baseless. Drenge revels in self-pity and malevolence but veers away from the depths of Nirvana and—yes—the guitars are thickly distorted although not exactly dripping with the grime of the Pacific Northwest.
Grunge’s classic themes—angst, sickness, anger wet-blanketed by apathy—are indeed prominent in Drenge’s lyrics. While it’s heartening to see the younger generation embrace the macabre pessimism of its elders, Drenge doesn’t exactly deep-throat all seven-inches.
The gods of grunge were masters of the slow build and the gentle/gruff dynamic. Deliberate, tense verses would balloon then burst in a jizzbomb of distortion and bellowing. Lacerating guitar lines and buzz-saw solos would cut through mountain-thick riffs. The music may sound trite all these years later, but I assure you that your nana and I really got off on it.
Drenge, on the other hand, only employs these devices in moderation; its blues-tinged garage punk is more straight-forward. This is of course the attraction of the garage: dank, direct, dick-hardening.
To be fair, critics have labelled the band “post-”grunge, but the prefix can imply anything from an homage to a mutiny. It is immaterial to speculate where, or if, Drenge reside salong this spectrum. It is its own band, and the public has taken notice: NME anointed it the best new band for 2014, and both a resigning Labour MP and a hipster BBC DJ have given the group man-crush shout-outs.
Tonight, in Paris’ La Maroquinerie club, the band plays a thoroughly no-nonsense set. Minimal pauses between songs, no inter-song banter beyond a mumbled “Merci.” The brothers playfully toss plastic water bottles at one another, appearing more focused on themselves and their music than on the 200 or 300 dolts howling and pointing at them from the pit.
The group kicks up a respectable bit of dust. On record and in concert, Eoin’s guitars are dense enough that the listener does not pine for bass. Drummer Rory does a passable Dave Grohl impersonation, minus the tats. The live set—almost entirely devoid of that quagmire of rock-star indulgence, the guitar solo—is raw yet tight and recalls a muddier Arctic Monkeys stripped of their lounge crooning.
Naturally, the band plays a large chunk of tracks from its sole album, 2013’s self-titled barn-burner. “Dogmeat” is driving and blood-soaked, and “Nothing” a fuzzstorm worthy of Mudhoney or the Melvins. The band really excels when Eoin steps back from the mic and the two simply thrash and burn, for example during the lumbering, glorious mess of the bridges on “Bloodsports” and “Backwaters.”
Even if its music is dark, its future looks bright. And yet, the band has claimed that its second album will be more upbeat and radio-friendly. Drenge may be second-guessing itself to dodge the sophomore jinx: Such a change will either spell total disaster or turn the band into media darlings.
Root for the former.
After all, it is better—to paraphrase Cobain’s suicide letter via Neil Young—to fuck off than to fade away.
And fuck off, these youngsters do. At tonight’s show, perhaps inspired by the reduced French work hours, they take their quittin’ time prematurely. This headlining act plays—maybe—45 minutes and finishes by 9:50pm. Too early to get a goddamn buzz on, let alone to set off the ringing in one’s ears. Fucking school night.
—Eric Bensel
