On album number seven,The Drones strike out through virgin territory and deliver the best kind of bad time. After making the Drones album to end all Drones albums – 2013’s masterwork I See Seaweed – Australia’s best live export have decided to radically alter their approach, producing eight slabs of warped cyberpunk.
This new direction is best heard in the guitar treatment. Gareth Liddiard and Dan Luscombe, perhaps bored with blues guitar, have radicalised their instruments and come up with a sound that’s ill and infected.
The album’s flawless first half includes the national anti-anthem Taman Shud and the bitter, heart-rending ballad To Think That I Once Loved You. Album opener PrivateExecution showcases all of the band’s new tricks, with heavy doses of synth paranoia while Liddiard provides a laundry list of reasons for losing hope. Then They Came For Me is a slow burner that likens the current immigration/refugee situation to Nazi propaganda on its way to an atomic explosion.
The record’s second half is even weirder in a host of subtle ways. Tailwind and Sometimes halve the tempo and triple the tension (the latter led by the vocals of bassist Fiona Kitschin), while Boredom makes good on the band’s pre-release murmuring that it’s a “bad trip you can dance to”. Shutdown SETI features Liddiard’s best ever anti-melody and one of his best lyrics (“High-tech don’t mean higher moral standing / That’s kinda racist”), before finishing the album by declaring humanity worthless over a symphony of guitars that would make Kevin Shields proud.
Feelin’ Kinda Free doesn’t sound like any other band. It doesn’t even really sound like The Drones.
BY LEONARDO SILVESTRINI
