As an example of going gloriously off-piste, it takes some beating. In July, when Tom Watson MP decided to step down as Labour's election co-ordinator, he began his resignation letter to Ed Miliband by talking about the Falkirk byelection, and somehow managed to end it professing his love for a two-piece blues-rock band from Derbyshire. Of course, Watson's recommendation alone isn't sufficient reason to pay attention to Drenge's music. With all due respect to the MP for West Bromwich East, the average politician's musical tips are best treated with about as much credulity as the average pop critic's stance on the Falkirk byelection. Yet shortly after Watson had declared the band "awesome", something did happen that may have made those yet to hear the sibling duo's scabrous garage rock stand up and pay attention. When asked how they felt about Watson's recommendation, the Drenge brothers declared, simply, that they were "not totally overjoyed" about it.
Such middle-fingered ingratitude felt happily out of place in a guitar scene that has become almost overwhelmingly fey and well brought-up of late. Further investigation into the mindset of Drenge revealed they were more than happy to stick out from the pack, speaking of things you just don't hear from your average Mumford & Sons wannabe: an anger born of teenage boredom, not to mention a desire to reconnect live performances with physical aggression and borderline violence. Drenge's lyrical fascination with blood, cartilage and the consumption of human flesh only further backed up the feeling that they might not make ideal dinner-party guests. As if a cherry on top of the whole misanthropic package was needed, these brothers – far too unshowy for rockstar monikers – boast the real names Eoin and Rory Loveless.
Perhaps the last time we witnessed such a not-here-to-please approach was with Arctic Monkeys. Hailing from Castleton, 30-odd miles west of Sheffield, Drenge share the Monkeys' northern outlook, but their music is far more the product of small-town English life. Backwaters makes this explicit, not just with its video featuring super-strength lager being consumed at bus stops, but in a lead guitar line that scuttles along like a more malevolent version of the Smiths' What Difference Does It Make?. The violent imagery coursing through it ("Saw a lamb and it was choking on death/ Its mother kicked and broke its neck.") runs through the record. You only need check the song titles – Dogmeat, Bloodsports, Gun Crazy – to see that Drenge are tapping into a festering brutality that still lurks on Britain's more isolated street corners, places that inspire very real desires to, as Eoin sings/threatens: "Make you run to the hills/ Make you piss your pants/ I wanna break you in half."
The Loveless brothers are adept at replicating such violence musically, in songs that are nasty, brutish and short; riffs pummelled so viciously they're barely recognisable by the time they're done with. The White Stripes and other bands centred around Detroit's garage-rock revival circa 2002 are the obvious reference point here, but the hallmarks of many a great guitar band are stamped throughout: the doomy pronouncements of Nick Cave (Dogmeat), the bicep-pumped riffing of QOTSA (Gun Crazy), even the raised eye of Pulp's Jarvis Cocker on Fuckabout.
More strikingly, Drenge tap into a confusion around love and sex that harks back to the likes of the Sex Pistols and, again, the Smiths. In fact, it's their startling rejection of intimacy that lift this debut album from a decent listen to a compelling one. Any potential paramours not previously put off by a date night that involves them running to the hills, pissing their pants and getting broken in half, might get the message more clearly on I Don't Want to Make Love to You. "I don't want you to give me a kiss/ 'Cos I don't wanna put you through this," sings Eoin, the back of his throat filling with revulsion, before gutturally expelling the song's title (itself a cheeky inversion of Willie Dixon's original). People In Love Make Me Feel Yuck might sound perilously close to appearing on the No Way I Ain't Gonna Tidy My Bedroom EP, but the sledgehammer pace and frenzied howls are convincing. Notably, the song's title is revisited as closing track Fuckabout fades: "I don't give a fuck about people in love/ They don't piss me off they just make me give up."
Drenge are clearly and unashamedly harnessing a very teenage kind of angst here. All the more amusing, you might think, that it struck a chord with a 46-year-old member of parliament. But listen to the ton of frustration being offloaded on this debut – the sound of rock'n'roll at its most raw and untamed – and you'd be hard pushed to imagine it failing to grab the attention of anyone.
