The Drones - any good (also Tropical Fuck Storm content here)

These new songs are properly great, I'm so hyped

Right? Instruments come in and out, but not in a dub-style. It's like they broke apart a song and put it back together as best they could but lost a bunch of pieces. And the unhinged vocals are icing on the cake.

There's also this: https://kompakt.fm/releases/boredom_remixes (had to double check as I first read Boredoms remixes! :)

I'd like to hype his album again

All of the advance singles are amazing. You Let My Tyres Down is one of the best songs to be released this year

Hype! Oh and I See Seaweed is incredible too

This album, not his album! It's three times as much her album as his :)

Is the 4th single out yet?

yes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fhOUfxIvgY

amusingly straight-up (if noisy) cover of "Stayin' Alive" on the flipside

Excellent, just bought it from Amazon! And that cover isn't too straight, lots of weirdness in the background. I dig it.

Cannot wait for the album, I expect it'll be one of my favorite releases of the year.

https://noisey.vice.com/en_au/article/xw7bbk/tropical-fuck-storm-album-stream-premiere-interview-gareth-liddiard-2018

here ya go fuckers

thanks, fucker, I enjoyed that

this fucking slaps!

"You Let My Tyres Down" is a fine opener but it makes you expect a Drones album and this....is not that, holy shit

very great, weird rock album. the switch to quieter music for the last 3.5 songs is extremely unsettling

the third song and "Rubber Bullies" are the standouts for me, it's wild that they've only been a unit for like 8 months

this is really really good. all of Gareth's stuff across the board is criminally underrated pretty much anywhere that isn't Australia

I Sea Seaweed is probably going to be resurrected as a modern classic tbh, at least if I and the RYM massive have anything to do with it

This is almost as good. I think the singles are largely the best tracks but the others are no slouches

I also think this is a grower album

yeah I am going to keep hyping this

very excited to stick "The Future of History" on my running playlist

This is nigh-on album of the year. Bumping it again because people keep bumping the fucking Parquet Courts thread

this is great, love(d) the drones

This is nigh-on album of the year.

Yep, I'm with you here. A great blend of weird guitars, propulsive beats, political lyrics, righteous anger, and male/female vocals. It pisses on generic indie rock from a great height.

kinda assuming there is some interpersonal stuff or musical difference in terms of this being tropical fuck storm and not the drones
in that this is great but i could def see this being a drones record, even if it's a bit more expansive in some ways

almost like a mclusky > future of the left thing

Feelin' Kinda Free def paved the way for it.

Gareth and Fiona's official line is that the other Drones members had loads of side-projects and they wanted one too...but hearing Gareth calling all his old stuff 'wank' I'm inclined to believe they wanted a new project and that this might be it for The Drones for now. Talk of a second TFS record already in the works and an incendiary live show. I think they're onto a winner here - much more scope for following their weirder (yet strangely more direct) urges. And besides, I See Seaweed was so great...they were never going to be able to put out anything to match it, really, it has the feel of an unconquerable moment. FKF was a rebellion against having to follow up ISS, and TFS is the glorious realisation of that rebellion imo

The Tropical Fuck Storm record is so great

My copy of the CD just arrived. Great cover to go along with the fuckstorm of music.

I'm assuming there's never gonna be a stateside physical release for this?

I got the CD for typical US cost via Amazon.

Fuck - the Tropical Fuck Storm record is amazing! I loved Feeling Kinda Free, but this is even noisier, hookier, and just... exciting. Also ordered via amazon.

Australians: has this made much of an impression locally?

It hasn't surpassed "Feelin Kinda Free" for me yet but it feels like a natural extension.

I played it for a mate who dug it, he subsequently played it for some of his 20-something workmates and they dug it, too. People just need to hear it!

I would fucking kill for them to tour Canada.

Australians: has this made much of an impression locally?

i would say good solid interest and support but not quite the firestorm of enthusiasm the music deserves? which i guess is the case for the drones also

i went to one of the pre-LP TFS shows and it was really great but i hadn't at that point got a good sense of this as a project distinct from the drones - definitely an extension of the Feelin Kinda Free sound (as mentioned above) and quite a few Drones songs in the set

real keen to go again now the project has hit its straps

totally love the way Gareth and pals have managed to elude worthiness and pursue something more bent

related: the new Harmony album is out today - TFS' Erica Dunn is a member, and they sound a bit like a much more depressed Drones/TFS. The new album is very good on first contact.

This is excellent. I should reaaly check out The Drones too

you haven't? omg

start with the newest one and work backwards maybe. actually fuck it start with 'i see seaweed' it's one of the best albums of the last 20 years

agreed

excellent new TFS tune on this split single with Liars:

https://famousclass.bandcamp.com/album/lamc-18

They're currently opening for Modest Mouse on some US dates.

Thanks for the tip! More TFS is always welcome. Definitely doing everything I want from music these days.

in advance of the year-end poll and campaigning I've been trying to think of how to explain to non-initiates the singular appeal of the Tropical Fuck Storm record, so forgive me as I blather on for a moment.

there's been a lot of discussion re: the 1975 and their attempt to represent "the present moment" and whether that's even desirable. to my mind, while the zeitgeisty lyrical moments on "a brief inquiry" are sometimes amusing, sometimes cringey, the actual sonics feel extremely au courant but not actually in touch with the zeitgeist in terms of the constant unease, the nerviness, the elusiveness of any feasible next move, that I think or assume most of us feel. imo a laughing death in meatspace not only captures that feeling, in runs off in several dozen different directions with it and find a set of colors and variations and headspaces way out of most bands' reach. some of the reasons they're able to do that are a product of Gareth Liddiard's evolution as a lyricist, vocalist and guitarist, and others are specific to this band configuration. Gareth has a motormouthed intensity in order to cram his syllable-dense lines in, occasionally reaching for rap-like cadences. his vocals now have about a 75%/25% bilious/tender split. his lyrics are more coherent and less fragmented than ever, but dense with Aussie-specific slang (esp in "you let my tyres down") and he's not afraid to get incredibly goofy in dogged pursuit of a conceit (the hilariously technophobic "future of history"). he's sneering but not superior, angry but not without good reason, rant-oriented but never long-winded. (the only mark against the album is there's no lyric in here as cathartic as the last Drones album's "why you think the whole world's gotta be like you? / fuck Western supremacy!") his guitar playing has come so far since the early Drones record; he seems to have grown bored with chords entirely, and now mostly plays in weird diagonal patterns and screeches and scrapes that intersect beautifully and weirdly with the sci-fi synths.

but it's the vocal interplay supplied by Erica Dunn (who has been a major part of two other albums this year, one with Mod Con, produced by Liddiard, and the other one with the excellent and Google-proof Harmony, which has the unfortunate distinction of being called Double Negative in 2018.) and Fiona of the Drones. They act as a sometimes mocking, sometimes sympathetic, sometimes furious counterpoint to Gareth, occasionally taking over for a verse at a time. (Erica takes the lead on their fearless, skronky non-album cover of "Stayin' Alive", which you can find on Spotify and I am too lazy to link right now). their cascading vocal lines combine with Gareth's serpentine guitars, the eerie synth washes, and Lauren's sometimes-live, sometimes-programmed (and not always easily distinguishable) drums make for a rock record that actually swings with something approaching...funk?

and like a lot of the rock records I really like, it gradually loses its mind. starting with its most rock-leaning material and gradually getting weirder and weirder, until you reach the convincing ambient soundscaping of "shellfish toxin" and the doom ballad title track, and you start to wonder how in hell you even got here in the first place. but it's "rubber bullies" that I think gets across in six tidy minutes what these guys are so good at. it's one of my most-played songs in years. working with a steady, slinky rhythm, Gareth details in typically dense verses just how the odds are stacked against the righteous, in terms that should be familiar to anyone who's ever been involved in a likely-to-lose campaign, while incorporating what might be the first example in rock history of a letter-ordered list seamlessly integrated into a verse:

discreet wet dreams and nightmares
seclusion, side by side
the world’s way too connected
and all anybody does is fight
staging their crypto inquisitions
all in multiple choice, like:
Anything that screws you’s
surely sured up by its bulk and...
A: better organized?
B: better mobilized?
C: getting monetized?
D: can’t be criticized?

after about five minutes there's finally the release of a proper dramatic build, complete with a key change (I think?), the first real release in over a quarter of the album. it ends the album hauntingly on an anecdote where even a holiday turns tragic and frightening, with an acquaintance winding up iced by one of Rio's Pacifying Police Units:

just take me on a holiday
and put me on an aeroplane
where we going now?
to that terrace over Rio
with a bougainvillaea vines
where the heat finally nailed me
so we stayed the extra night
and the guard up in the watchtower
charged with keeping out the fighting
joked the difference between sexes
all boils down to their handwriting
when we checked out the next morning
we were on a first name basis
but then he had the kind of features
where you can’t recall his face
but it wouldn’t have been that much later he saw God’s
‘cause he died staring up the nostrils
of a UPP shotgun

tl:dr, this is a fucking kickass rock band that relies on very few typical kickass rock band tropes in favor of an approach that's both more cerebral and less studied, somehow

excellent stuff simon!

yeah both posts otm
my favourite rock album of the year by far. very excited to go see them next year when they'll be coming to europe

Didn't know about the new band, sounds real good, will give it a go to consider for my year end

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_9fLIiSaRQ

tl:dr, this is a fucking kickass rock band that relies on very few typical kickass rock band tropes in favor of an approach that's both more cerebral and less studied, somehow

― resident hack (Simon H.), Tuesday, 18 December 2018 04:49 (nine hours ago) Permalink

This.

Also using the Carducci Metric, you can tell TFS is a great band cuz no one is talking about them

Gareth lyrically doesn't always stick the landing, for me anyway, but when he does, it completely fucking flattens me

"I See Seaweed" by the Drones is probably the best rock record of the last ten yrs

I possibly agree

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qdrip6k3g74

whoa that stayin' alive cover rules

it's kinda wild that the drones' debut came out 16 years ago and gareth is only getting better and better. great post simon