Moon & Back Music

The Summer of sadness has been and gone, now as the winter of discontent comes to a close the world looks to The Drums and asks, what next?

The Drums - the image, the sound and the cardigan

The ‘hype’ band. The label that more often than not sparks the beginning of the end of so many musical careers. Too often do floppy fringed hopefuls fall by the wayside of record label politics, collapsing under the pressure of mass press coverage, seldom having the substance to back up the exposure.

An all to familiar story for The Drums, whose earlier musical careers were quashed at the hands of a brutal industry, as they were cast adrift as nothing more than ‘cheap scene chancers’. However, fast -forward little over three years and several of those same
‘chancers’, produced the debut of 2009.

In the first of two (worst kept) secret gigs the band will play tonight, as well as their NME tour slot, the band convince a shoe box sized room full of tentatively prying eyes, that they are in fact all as they seem. A Manchester backdrop is all too fitting, as the band open with two new album tracks ‘It Will All End in Tears’ and latest single ‘Best Friend’. Suddenly, those early Smiths appearances no longer seem so distant.

Frontman, Johnathan Pierce is Morrissey’s flamboyance, Jim Morrisson’s enigmatic glare and Ian Curtis’s raw live intensity all rolled into the most entertaining frontman this side of the millennium. Guitarist Jacob Graham almost threatens to steal the show on following track (and previous single) ‘I felt stupid’ for surreal tambourine skills, and a dance that would put any would be Moz to shame.

E.P tracks ‘Make You Mine’ and ‘Let’s Go Surfing’ are already the soundtrack to next years festival circuit, with unashamedly surf pop chorus’ however it’s future album tracks ‘Book of Stories’ and ‘Forever and Ever’ that steal the show. The Wake influence comes hurtling through in the more post punk sounds of the new tracks, leaving the Beach Boys tag at the newer, darker post punk door. The notable absence of previous tracks such as ‘Submarine’ and the heartbreaking ‘Down by the Water’ do leave a small void in the set, as without these songs even The Drums would struggle to fill such a compromising venue.

Finally, it seems the ‘hype’ has come to fruition. The rare sight of style and substance coming together making for a refreshing change to the tired pop formula of recent years, making for an exciting prospect to say the very least. Let’s just hope the wave of success the band is currently riding doesn’t pass them by.