Lonely The Brave - Backroads

Every few years or so people start scratching their heads and trying to predict who the ‘next generation of festival headliners’ will be. Scrabbling about in the dirt for answers, the trail invariably leads people to all the wrong corners of their record collection (few, for example, would have predicted Biffy’s rise and rise off the back of ‘Blackened Sky’). But if pickng those who will reach the very top of the pile is something of an inexact science, spotting those who have the ingredients that might, potentially, take them there is somewhat easier. Enter Lonely the Brave.

With ‘Backroads’ the Cambridge quintet have calmly but firmly stuck their flag in the ground as a band with the charisma and sinewy power to really start making waves. Part Hell is For Heroes, part Hundred Reasons, part Editors they combine the best of a plethora of worlds to produce something which, above all else, reeks of the sort of honesty that you can’t forge, fake or get given by a swanky major label.

The two middle tracks of this EP – ‘Deserter’ and ‘Black Saucers’ – are particularly demonstrative of a band capable of great things. The former is the smouldering affair giving the rich timbre of singer David Jakes a chance to really shine. A song to drink alone to. The latter a balls-out, pedal down anthem. A song to get pissed with all your mates to. What more could you want?

Of course, there’s a long way to go. A LONG way to go. But Lonely the Brave are onto something that could, if nurtured in the right way and given a chance to grow organically make them serious contenders in the years ahead. Pick this up and who knows, if they do end up headlining festivals, you could even get the joy lording it in your mates’ dirt-scrabbled faces.