Electric River – The Faith & Patience

There has been a real shortage of quality UK rock acts over the last few years, but thankfully Electric River are looking to bring that to an end. They have already managed to generate some great press interest and have also benefited from some good support slots for the likes of Lit. The release of this debut album therefore sees the band in a great position to make further strides.

The album opens with “Calling Out” which is a great modern rock song, a real mixture of a classic rock sound and a more contemporary feel. Songs like “Chorus Of Fire” and “Keep The Engine Burning” are more straight forward rocking songs that have hints of The Gaslight Anthem or in particular an Australian band called King Cannons.

“Leap Of Faith” starts off as a more acoustic songwriter song and then cuts into another rocker to give a sound which is very reminiscent of Chuck Ragan’s recent output. It’s a quality Americana influenced song. We then get a real change in feel and tempo with “Hold Your Nerve” as it has a more genuinely upbeat feel to it and a more ‘poppy’ sound. You can imagine that the band needed to hold its own nerve when recording this, and good job they did as it is a brilliant song. It has a more commercial feel to it, which is more akin to someone like The Killers. That commercial feel continues with “In Your Name” and “Fixer’ which are anthemic songs that could easily cross over with a bit of radio support (we can live in hope!)

However, possibly the best song on the album is “Queen Of Hearts” this has a real Gaslight Anthem feel to it. Although unlike that band, there is a confidence to have even greater focus on the melody and chorus with less of the punk grit. “This Garden Will Grow” keeps this feeling growing with more of an expansive feel to the sound. They slow it down for the final song, “Watersong” which clearly has a Springsteen influenced sound to it. It has that gentle feel which you sense is trying to smooth over the despair within the lyrics.

This really is an excellent modern rock album. The beauty of it, is that it doesn’t appear to have any pretensions and there is no sense they have to hide behind gimmicks or a desire to be ‘different’. The focus is literally on producing an album which is just full of quality, well written songs. They are delivered with a confidence and assurance which is fully justified by the musicianship. Definitely a band to check out.