It may only be mere months since Lonely The Brave dazzled us for a second time with sophomore album ‘Things Will Matter’, but they’re back already with new material. Somehow alongside being festival season’s busiest band they’ve also found the time to drop new EP ‘Dust and Bones’. And from the outset it’s all about that voice. Dave Jakes really is one of the absolute best vocal performers of this generation of UK rock.
We kick off with title track ‘Dust and Bones’, arguably the standout moment from the new album, and one loaded with poise, drama and soaring vocals.
The main point of interest here are the two new original offerings. ‘Place Isn’t Lost’ is a tense, frenetic number undercut with non-stop competing riffs building a sense of creeping anxiety and topped off with on edge barked vocals from Jakes. While ‘Bottled Time’ is a pretty standard LTB effort that drives forward with plenty of nods to mid-nineties US arena grunge. As you’d expect there’s the usual gorgeously layered riffs and solo work that has become the band’s hallmark.
The crowning jewel of the EP is its closing cover. Covering a song as iconic as ‘Comfortably Numb’ is a big ask, but Jakes takes it in his stride with an epic multi-faceted performance. Sonically LTB also effortlessly capture the atmosphere and grandeur of the original while subtly putting their own spin on it at every turn.
With LTB playing festivals almost every weekend this festival season, that’s an awful lot of people being exposed to them for the first time. ’Dust and Bones’ has presumably been put together primarily for that audience as a quick-to-digest snapshot of everything the band is capable of. To that end, it will serve them well, while existing fans could be raving about the cover for years to come. This is another impossible to fault release from a band that’s as potent and underrated as they come.
4/5
‘Dust and Bones’ EP by Lonely The Brave is released on August 12th on Hassle Records.
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Words by Dane Wright (@MrDaneWright)
