REVIEW: The Drones—Havilah (2008)
Long awaited reissue of the Aussie band's 4th studio album.
I have a confession to make. I was a terrible Johnny-come-lately to The Drones. It’s not that I ignored them, or thought I didn’t like them or anything of the sort. I just didn’t know they existed. Never once heard them on the radio, or bigged up in the press, or through a friend. They were invisible to me. Like quite a few people I suspect, I only became aware of them through Gareth Liddiard's subsequent band Tropical Fuck Storm, and so I have had to steadily work backwards, picking up the odd album here and there whenever they become available. I still have yet to hear a song of theirs in the wild.
But actually getting hold of their albums has been a multi-year quest, as most of them were/are out of print. But the merciful gods of Bang Records in Spain have been steadily repressing The Drones catalogue over recent years. This is just as well, because the rotters on Discogs and elsewhere do love a bit of vinyl scarcity, and think nothing of charging three figure sums whenever possible. Imagine my righteous delight when I snagged this gorgeous double vinyl reissue for £27. Take that, scalpers!
Even more joyous is how good this album is. Being somewhat rooted in old habits, I’d never listened to the album before it hit the turntable. There is something special about knowing nothing about a piece of music before the needle hits the groove. It could have been a turkey, but Gareth Liddiard has earned my trust at this point. I want the whole damned set.
Having been steeped in the gnarly TFS world over the past 7 or so years, it’s incredibly interesting hearing Havliah. It’s a cleaner, altogether more conventional version of his songwriting. The snarl and the twisted guitar playing are unmistakably there right from the word go on tracks like Nail It Down. And boy, does he love to throw down a verse. One after another—that’s something he’s still fond of doing right up to the present day. Even when you think the song is done, it goes again, and he pours more emotion into his crazed mechanic vocal stylings than your average Mariah Carey ballad. You’re strapped in for the ride, and he isn’t letting you out till it’s done.
The Minotaur is another feral cracker, and easily one of the best songs by The Drones I’ve heard yet. Unsurprisingly this one was the single, though this in the weird era when YouTube was new, but iPods were the thing, and Spotify wasn’t yet established, and the physical singles market was all but dead. There was no promo video, but an October 2008 performance has been preserved (link below), and fully captures the crackling energy of the song live, while still being close enough to the studio version to do it justice. It’s like a meeting-point between Nick Cave, Tom Waits and early Pixies. A fascinating blend. It ought to have been huge. It has everything: pop sensibility married to unhinged, singular rock energy.
Of course they can’t keep up that kind of pace, and so immediately take a left turn on songs like The Drifting Housewife and Careful As You Go, which both push the button marked gentle acoustic murder ballad. Liddiard always has that softer mode in his locker, but his songs are no less powerful for it.
You see other pairs of songs on the album. Both I Am A Supercargo and Cold And Sober also keep it mid-tempo, but push the guitar attack once again, and both ebb and flow in classic Liddiard fashion, hollering furiously one moment, crooning the next, and ratcheting up the guitar assault to go with it. If he has a formula, it’s this. You hear it in so many of his songs once you dig into their canon, but it’s always incredibly affecting, so that once he launches into yet another one of his demented guitar strangulations, he coaxes every bit of emotion out of the song.
Things do more energetic elsewhere, mind you. Case in point the rockier Oh My and the breezy unplugged You’re Acting’s Like It’s The End of The World. But those are nothing next to bruising live closer (on the streaming version) I Don’t Ever Want To Change, which makes me fear the circle pit just hearing it. For an album that mostly operates in a relatively gentle mode, it sure does have some rockers on it—and at one hour long, you’re grateful for them, as it helps the preponderance of slower song breathe.
Y’know, judging by the very modest streaming stats, and the number of people who have added The Drones albums to their Discogs collections, I get a strong impression that an awful lot of other rock fans never got around to this band either, but you’re missing out. I guess word of mouth will eventually let the cream rise to the top, but they have some seriously great stuff, and this is a prime example.
