angeltape. Drahla

Leeds band Drahla is around for nine years and has released one album in 2019 called 'Useless Coordinates'. The past may all be, the band is new to me. The foursome, vocalist and guitarist Luciel Brown, bassist Rob Riggs, drummer Mike Ainsley and new guitarist Ewan Barr, is ready for a second go at success.

The music of Drahla is fairly left off centre, with its stranger rhythms and post punk guitars. The band clearly has listened to albums from their parents' or other elder family members with a keen ear or two. Although this alternative rock is popular for quite some years again, new bands keep popping up, showing they can play and catch the attention of veterans like myself. This is something that shows at live shows quite often, where audiences can be very mixed in age, except for teenagers and early twenties. (Is that different in the U.K. for example? Let me know in the comments.)

Still, when the first song on angeltape starts, 'Under The Glass', there's only one recent act I'm reminded of instantly, Wet Leg. That duo/band is more commercial compared to Drahla and puts far more humour into its music. The comparison may come more from the way Luciel Brown sings than from the music. It is undeniably there and that's okay. Wet Leg is, as far as I'm concerned, the number one band coming out of the 20s so far.

Drahla is far more postpunk. The music has as sharp a point as the design chair in the artwork. It moves towards the obstinate and against the grain sound that came out from around 1980. Talking Heads and all those bands with a repeated word from England. So gloomy and dark. Drahla does not make the sun shine. A lot has happened in the lives of the band members in the past years, which is reflected in the music.

Not all is what it appears here though. The music on angeltape sparkles no little. Musically the band really, really goes for it. This is complex music but played in such a way that it comes totally alive. This isn't mathematically correct music, like I thought Talking Heads to be at the time. Drahla truly rocks. It may even go more for the heart than the brain. Add that saxophone that sears through several songs like a dervish and the extra points scored are coming straight at the listener. Chris Duffin plays a lead role regularly and deserves to become a full band member.

What I would also like to point to is the bass in most of the songs. Rob Riggs is so dominantly present that he seems to keep up the whole of the song at times. Usually, I do not know much to write about the bass but here it is one of the three instrument defining the post punk sound. The drums keep it all together as the bass is allowed to go off on its own plain. With the two guitars as rhythm instruments, playing off each others weird rhythms. I'm glad not having to play in Drahla, as I would be lost after a few seconds most likely. If you count some of the guitar sound explosions as apart of the rhythm that is. And then enters Duffin's sax once again lifting everything up even more.

No, I can't listen to angeltape at every moment of the day. For that it is far too intense. That intensity comes with quality though and that will make me return to the album regularly. Drahla, remember that name.

Wout de Natris

You can listen to and order angeltape here:

https://drahla.bandcamp.com/album/angeltape