Review by Mark Granger
Release date: 2 June 2014
After a quite a few years hard slog, from busking on the street of Kent to numerous tours on the toilet circuit, Electric River are finally getting the recognition they deserve. In the past year they have received an award, garnered radio play and bagged a high profile tour with American pop punks Lit. Now they unleash their debut album The Faith And The Patience which mixes classic rock ‘n roll with a punk heart. And by the sounds of it the band have poured that heart as well as their souls into every note, and with production from Peter Miles (The King Blues, We Are The Ocean) and expertly mastered at none other than Abbey Road by Frank Arkwright (Frank Turner), you can hear that soul bleed through the speakers from the very second opening track ‘Calling Out’ crashes into your ears.
It really is a storming debut with the aforementioned ‘Calling Out’, ‘Happy’ and live favourite ‘Keep The Engines Burning’ all boasting stadium-sized choruses. Singer/bassist Sponge has a voice that, whether he likes it or not, will draw comparisons with Springsteen, and with delay-soaked guitar lines appearing throughout the album, there will be the inevitable U2 references. That being said the place where Electric River sit musically is a precarious one and they could easily be compared to bands like Kings Of Leon, and as often demonstrated by those Nashville rockers it’s easy to take the impassioned rock song too far the wrong way and into cringe territory. Thankfully this is something that Electric River manage to avoid for the majority of the album and it’s only on the intro to folky, Celtic-inspired ‘Leap Of Faith’ and on closing track ‘Watersong’ that things go slightly awry. Electric River have the songs and they have the following, and with a combination like that, mainstream success shouldn’t be far away.
7 out of 10
Track Listing:
- Calling Out
- Chorus Of Fire
- Cold
- The Fixer
- Happy
- Hold Your Nerve
- In Your Name
- Keep The Engines Burning
- Leap Of Faith
- Queen Of Hearts
- This Garden Will Grow
- Watersong
