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

https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/9440627/mike-noga-the-drones-obit

I guess he was on every album but the last? Loads of heroic drumming. I'll check out his solo records for sure. RIP.

He joined in 2004 so he wasn’t on the first one (Here Come the Lies) either. But on all my favourites.

I revisit this performance vid at least once a year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbkDDSM2Gz4

oh man i wish i could go to this, gareth solo show with jim white on drums!!!!

https://www.nme.com/en_au/news/music/tropical-fuck-storms-gareth-liddiard-announces-solo-shows-2886316

just bought tickets for one of the sydney shows - they’re being joined in melb by chris abrahams!! - Jim is calling it a new band and gareth is saying they’re gonna record an album in may - so excited by this

also pretty psyched for upcoming ed kuepper / jim white shows - some pretty cool gigs happening in semi-post-covid year 2021, feels good to be looking forward to cool stuff

yeah i saw that announcement on the band's instagram, exciting! have fun at the show! #jealous

wooooah I didn't know it was a band, that's awesome

quoting the post here:

we haven't come up with a name decent band name yet but here ya go... Chris Abrahams of avant free jazz trio The Necks is joining Jim and myself for a couple of warm up shows at the brunswick ballroom before we all run off and make babies in the studio in May then put an album out

wow that's uh, quite a lineup

you not into it?

Understated enthousiasm I assume ;)

no I really am excited!!

me too :)

it will be interesting...TFS is very idiosyncratic and unique but it's still approaching a conventional rock band in a peculiar way

the other two i associate way more with "freer" playing though obviously that's not all they can do

I'm expecting/imagining a knottier cousin to the solo album.

Niiiice.

gareth and jim show was absolutely amazing, still awed by how good it was - gareth on acoustic but also using pedals and shredding - songs would often start folky and then surge towards crescendos of noise - the rhythmic interplay between the guitar and drums was frequently sublime - mix of solo album stuff, drones songs and a couple of covers - the thought of chris abrahams being added to this sound is fkn crazy - very very good music and i profoundly enjoyed drinking three (3) beers on a wednesday evening while listening to it

sounds great. anyone who hasn't heard the solo album is missing out

sounds Dawsonesque!

thanks emsworth! nice to hear about it

^^co-sign. Thanks for reporting back, feels good to read about and get the vibes of a real live gig

well jealous here

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

found a video of "taman shud" from one of the gareth & jim shows, certainly has me excited for the upcoming album

Ah man that's huge

that's awesome

That drum pattern is so sick

Right? The way it builds up but denys you a culmination is thrilling.

I only learned about this guy through TFS and had no idea about The Drones, also had no idea that the guy is like 46.

Anyway, that performance is great (unsurprising as Jim White rarely plays on something bad).

was talking with a friend yesterday about G.Liddiard being such an enduring force in aus. music - he's been pretty consistently outstanding for a couple of decades now

he feels at least somewhat informed by the Neil Young model of changing it up whenever things start getting familiar

(way back in the day the Drones used to cover Cortez the Killer and supported Neil Young on his 2013 tour with Crazy Horse - i think they were just booked for one show and then Neil asked for them to join the whole tour? that's what I heard anyway)

but he's also been really canny about building a sustainable life in music, in a way that gives him maximum freedom to keep doing interesting shit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21bEUXmM2OM

This is such a good song. I find it weird that I didn't know anything about this guy until maybe the last year or so, and then didn't realize he had been a force in music for so long until even more recently.

the line "But I ain't some kinda bird shit mayor/Bolted to the town square" keeps running through my head

https://spring-time.bandcamp.com/
They put a live song on bandcamp

oh wow that's a great performance

checked the TFS facebook page and gareth's also confirmed a new TFS album is on the way soon too!

yay!

Gareth, AND Chris Abrahams?
WTF?? Who had THAT pairing on their bingo card?
AND Jim White???
A complete album from this trio????
Holy crap.... my brain can't process this beautiful bit of news right now.

Someone please make me a Drones/TFS/Liddiard program, I feel sort of lost in all the material.

honestly just start w I See Seaweed and then bounce around. I find the early Drones records fun but sometimes more skronk than song, personally I don't really start loving them front to back till Gala Mill

other than that there's only two TFS albums (first is superior) and one 70 minute Liddiard solo folk record (which rules)

My first encounter with any of this material was the first TFS album and that remains my favorite thing of the whole lot. Love the second TFS album and agree the mid-late Drones albums are probably the better ones though it’s all good.

By coincidence I was listening to Gala Mill yesterday and the line “I tell you nothing’s really changed but I am not the same” jumped out and knifed me when I wasn’t expecting. Garett knows how to deliver his lines.

I think the second TFS is pretty much tied with the first for me now

yeah I See Seaweed is as good of a starting point as any, then go forward to Feelin Kinda Free & the TFS albums if you want to hear his work get noisier & post-punkier or go backwards to the previous Drones albums if you want to hear unadorned punk blues epics etc.

& Liddiard's solo album is just its own thing

i'm not personally huge on the pre-ISS stuff, it's not bad or anything but not really my thing enough to enjoy a whole album of

re early albums - second Drones album (that’s Wait Long… right?) was the one that really kicked off in Aus - well at least amongst a certain listenership, not household name shit - my Melb friends were already talking them up as a live proposition but Shark Fin Blues was pretty much an instant classic and would strongly rep for Baby2, Sitting on the Edge of the Bed Cryin, Locust, This Time - it’s a good LP, although perhaps not the place to start?

yeah Wait Long By The River has always seemed like the most acclaimed one here, not my personal favourite by any means but there's still good stuff on it

I'll go left field and recommend Havilah as a good place to start. The songs are amazing.

https://www.abc.net.au/doublej/programs/mornings/double-j-mornings-tropical-f-storm-premiere/13393600

new TFS "G.A.F.F." here at 33:20

video coming soon here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akqQCtM2QLc

album Deep States out 20 August

oh album has leaked already before it even got a proper announcement lol

and it's in terrible quality so i'm not gonna bother listening yet

but here's the tracklist

The Greatest Story Ever Told
G.A.F.F.
Blue Beam Baby
Suburbiopia
Bumma Sanger
The Donkey
Reporting Of A Failed Campaign
New Romeo Agent
Legal Ghost
The Confinement Of The Quarks

I like "G.A.F.F." a lot but I'm definitely noticing more clunkers in Gareth's lyrics than usual

it's fine but doesn't have me excited like TFS at their best do

i feel much more excited about the Springtime album than this one but i'm sure it will be decent at the very least

Bandcamp alerted to this yesterday but that video (or probably just that this is my second listen!) has made "G.A.F.F." more endearing.

It's getting weird how much more receptive I am to TFS than the Drones. (Or at least early Drones. I have a couple of pre-ISS Drones CDs here somewhere, but mainly just remember wishing they sounded like "Jezebel" 100% of the time. More my problem than theirs, no doubt.)

I haven't been paying super close attention (probably spent more time watching them live than I have listening to their recordings) - but really enjoyed G.A.F.F - perfect proportions of funky/rockin/gonzo - awesome BVs (I feel great deployment of BVs is a significant ingredient in Liddiard secret sauce) - when I was listening I thought 'nothing else really sounds like this' and that always feels good

I guess 'laser-accurate scattershot imagery Gareth rap about the fucked up fucken world' is kind of a staple song form now - is Tamam Shud the apotheosis of this one? - but it's still effective as hell and I dug it here albeit I didn't really parse the lyrics closely

ha yep and just watched the video and it definitely sells it great - speaking of cool BVs (I guess really it's a pre-chorus or something) that moment when you first Fiona and Erica in the hotel is so great

yeah i'm really enthusiastic about g.a.f.f.

he's straight spittin, love the cadences and density of the lyrics, good funky groove