So when Gareth Liddiard of The Drones had a beer can chucked at his head earlier this year at a show in Sydney’s Metro Theatre, one can only assume the act was designed as a compliment. Does that kind of praise get hurled Liddiard’s way often then? “Not a huge amount: not as much as you’d think,” Liddiard says. “But we’ve pegged stuff at the audience too. I remember Dan [Luscombe] pegging something at someone in the front row who was talking.
“As a musician onstage, you’re really in a high level of concentration. You’re doing things that involve a high level of dexterity. If you want to hit someone when they’ve thrown something at you, you can fucken’ hit them. It’s revved up physically. If somebody’s rude to you during your work day, compare that to running ten times around the block and then have someone be rude to you. If they were rude after a jog, you’d clock ‘em.”
2016 has seen Liddiard and The Drones take to the stage numerous times, playing cuts off their stunning, snarky new record, Feelin’ Kinda Free. But such an intense on and off again touring cycle has had its own distinct side effects. “When you’re on tour, it normalises you,” says Liddiard.
“You get this huge cathartic release. But then you get home and you’re confronted with the dishes. It’s alright for a few weeks. But then you really need to have what is essentially at the root of it a kind of tantrum. [Gigs] are huge existential tantrums. It’s not weird to have a bunch of people watching another bunch of people going through these ritualistic motions, working through these taboo emotions. It’s not very different from a corroboree or something.”
‘Taboo’ being the key word. The Drones’ back catalogue is peppered with a myriad of blackly comic jokes, false confessions and bad trips. “We rarely laughed and she often cried”, goes a line in She Had An Abortion That She Made Me Pay For, and that kind of half funny, mostly fucked proclamation is both Liddiard’s speciality and his release.
“In normal conversation, you can’t really bring up grief, you can’t bring up bereavement,” he says. “Even global warming – you can’t really get to the bottom of it during a dinner conversation because your friends will hate you. So everyone steers clear of that shit, usually.”
Death is the other unmentionable that binds The Drones’ work together: the stark reality behind most great art. “Humans are the only animals that know they’re going to cark it,” Liddiard says. “Humans have that every day. They know it. That is the root of art. That’s the pure, defining thing: no matter all our differences, we’re all fucked. [Art] is cathartic, but it won’t fix the problem.
“You look at someone like Bob Marley and he does something different in order to get to the same place. Whether it’s a The Drones show or something like a Rollins Band show from the early ‘80s, when it’s just that depressing, bad vibes kind of thing: that’s just the route we take to get everyone feeling like they’re together in the same room. It’s this huge communal grieving process. It’s not pleasant, but in the end everyone feels like they’re together.”
Ultimately, Liddiard is at pains to stress that he doesn’t always understand his art, or even music in general. “Music is so mysterious. It’s impossible to get to the bottom of. Opposed to literature, which feels sort of quantifiable – music is just…” He goes quiet for the briefest of moments. “I mean, what is it? It’s magic. Why does it make you feel that way? Why do the hairs on your arm stand up? It’s mad.”
By Joseph Earp
