After a couple of
EPs that were big on quirkiness if not originality, super-hyped Brooklyn quartet The Drums finally deliver their debut
album.
Despite their Hoxton haircuts and fashion magazine photo shoots, The Drums are
very definitely not trendy; they bang on about The Wake, dance like robots and
come off as fiercely uncool. They’re channelling Sarah Records rather than The
Strokes, which is admirably different – when it works.
Opening track Best Friend encapsulates The Drums at their best. With tight
guitar riffs, yearning lyrics and an insistent repetitive vocal hook, it
features brilliantly gauche lines like, "You were my best friend/But then
you died". But they repeat this formula to diminishing effect across the
album. Every song kicks in with the same tinny drum beat, whiny guitar and Joy
Division bass line, and lead singer Jonathan Pierce’s monotone vocals quickly
pall. The eccentricities poking through on earlier songs like I Felt Stupid are
flattened out, leaving only disappointing blandness.
Lyrical simplicity ("I thought my life would get easier/Instead it’s
getting harder without you") quickly stops sounding refreshing and comes
across as the best they can do. Me And The Moon’s "You still sleep with
your back to me" is like a first draft "Why is the bedroom so cold/You’ve
turned away on your side", lacking the original’s painful intimacy. And
that’s the problem: there’s an emptiness at the heart of this album. The Drums
are C86 without a manifesto. For all their name-dropping of British indie pop,
they come across as false, a band lacking in politics or sincerity, and so
desperate to be loved that it becomes a turn-off.
When they stop trying to sound like The Field Mice, they deliver something
breezy and harmonious that sounds like it’s produced by a goth Phil Spector.
Let’s Go Surfing has a playful melody undercut by an eerie sense of menace;
it’s The Beach Boys mixed with The Cure, and somehow it works. We Tried,
proclaims the title of one song, and if they wore that effort a bit more lightly,
they could make something joyous and special. Maybe they’ll deliver when the
pressure’s off, but for now, this is too try-hard to love.
