The Drums, at the Popfest Festival.
New York, May the 17th 2009, last day of the Popfest, which gathers every year around thirty local and international indie pop bands who all share an immoderate love for Sarah Records and the C86 NME compilation. Today, at the Lower East Side’s famous venue the Cake Shop, there are no less than twelve bands, to close the festival. The hundred or so people huddled in the narrow and overheated cellar seem to be there only to catch a rare appearance of the Swedish duo Suburban Kids With Biblical Names, headlining that night.
The first six bands having failed to arouse anything but polite enthusiasm, a bunch of unknown people get up on stage. “Hello we’re the Drums, and this is our first concert” says the singer to a listless crowd. But the band starts to play, and with the first guitar chords, something happens. A 50’ surf inspired melody led by a skinny drum beat, two identically dressed backing vocalists straight out of Phil Spector’s studio, and, above all, a dreamy voice, cheerfully bringing you down. “You were my best friend but then you died when I was 23 and you were 25, how will I survive?”, as though Morrissey had somehow reincarnated into a Florida-bred, suntanned, adolescent body. With seven songs lasting just under twenty minutes, the Drums have just made a remarkable debut into the New York scene and the blog community.
Perfect pop songs, sensitive and romantic, delivered with all the freshness and sincerity of a rebellious youth. The influences are obvious: Stuart Murdoch’s affected shyness, the epileptic stage antics of Ian Curtis, backing vocals by the Ronettes, and the clear guitar riffs of Johnny Marr. But somehow, this improbable mixture of colourful inspirations, stolen from their one-night-stand’s iPods, manages to sound sincere, unlike most hype surfing bands. The two childhood friends who are at the heart of the band, Jonathan Pierce and Jacob Graham, play their music as though their lives were at stake, with the subsequent innocence and sincerity which grants their songs the magnificent duality present in all the best pop music, from the Smiths to the Field Mice: songs one can listen to with one ear, but that can also change your life, depending on your mood. With their wild romanticism and underlying melancholy, their songs are nevertheless furiously catchy, for though they might be young and unhappy but they are still allowed to dance, even though they will wake up alone the next morning.
Hardly six months after this first concert, the band’s name is on everyone’s lips. Despite the buzz, despite this too fast and too predictable success, despite constant play, the 7 songs of the “Summertime” EP, released by the excellent label Moshi Moshi, have kept their cool, as well as their blazing reminiscing power, thanks to their perfect pop melodies and to the apparent bipolarity of the two song writers. “We only write about two feelings: one is the first day of summer when you and all of your friends are standing on the edge of a cliff watching the sun set and being overcome with all of your hopes and dreams at once. The other is when you're walking alone in the rain and realize you will be alone forever.” The opening paragraph of their official biography says it all. You don’t need to be a virtuoso guitarist or an English Lit major to write songs meant for everyone, songs that hit you where it hurts.
Because we love to pick at old scabs to remember the meaning of suffering, because sadness expressed with a smile, a tear, and a catchy beat is more beautiful, the Drums’ songs, under their cheery surface, are filled with a deep angst as attractive as the Velvet Underground’s white light. And listening to “Down by the Water” or “Saddest Summer”, we can only thank the girls who broke Jonathan Pierce and Jacob Graham’s hearts. Those deceptions pushed them to write these songs, haunted by the loss of someone dear, but also lit by the hope and wait for a new love which will undoubtedly arrive, sooner or later.
Every year, millions of heart-throbbing teenagers discover the work of the Smiths with astonishment, and learn to adapt little by little, to face the ups and downs of adult life. They can now rely on the Drums.
Adrien Rouget