The Drums
Following a freewheeling debut record and the dark synth explorations of sophomore album Portamento, The Drums are back with Encyclopedia. We met up with Jonny Pierce and Jacob Graham in Montreal to talk about escapism, early electronic film soundtracks and their muscular new album.
G—I associate The Drums with the Beach Boys, not just with the tone or the sound, but how it’s balanced with lyrical content that is not always upbeat. Occasionally, you hear things about water in the songs but I never really took that as a literal thing. To me, I saw it as a metaphor for losing or gaining idealism. Would you consider yourselves idealists?
Jonny Pierce—I think we certainly, at the time we wrote those songs, would consider ourselves escapists. We were living in the middle of nowhere, in this small town in Florida called Kissimmee, and we were writing these songs and recording them. We were dirt poor. I had to ride my bike 20 miles each way to my job where I sold shoes.
But we were also doing really sort of dreamy things. We found a little wooden canoe type boat and went down this little stream that was near our apartment complex. We found ourselves in an orange orchard and we got out and just spent the whole day there.
Jacob Graham—I think we felt so disconnected from the greater world that the idea of idealism never even crossed our minds, you know? [We were] so cut off that it was more like escapism. Kind of like, ‘If we’re not part of the world, then let’s really not be part of the world.’
JP—But, you know, you do touch on something when you say that. When we wrote the song, “Let’s Go Surfing”, we wrote it and recorded it the day Obama came into presidency. We were just so thrilled, along with everyone else. It’s one of those things that was such a big thing that, even though we were in our little weird orange orchard bubble, it obviously registered with us. That song is about that more than anything else.
G—The enthusiasm in that song is palpable. I feel like one of the most exciting things about music is that you can try and replicate a feeling and when people listen to it, they get that feeling from it.
JP—That song was about finally being able to breathe and feel a little carefree, like, ‘Okay, everything’s gonna be okay!’
G—I read an interview with Jonny in the Quietus where he was talking about “Let’s Go Surfing” and he said, “There were literally a few shows where I felt like throwing up on stage if I had to play it again.” Listening to the new album, I’m wondering if you still feel like that because I noticed you’re whistling again.
JP—[Laughs] Yeah, but this whistling is so much more unsure of itself.
JG—For a long time, we were kind of like, ‘We just recorded this funny, weird song on a whim when literally nobody was paying attention to us,’ and then it took on this life of its own. And we were like, ‘Wait, that’s not quite us!’
JP— ‘Hold on, we’ve got eight other songs – we just put this one out first!’
JG—When you’re pushed out into the whole world and that’s your identity, it’s just a little unsettling. Now we’re kind of on the other side of that, where that song has lost its power. It’s like singing Happy Birthday to somebody.
G—This new album is a major departure sonically, especially with the production. Things are more upfront. I notice a lot more presence of synth. It reminds me of early electronic film soundtracks, like Wendy Carlos on A Clockwork Orange soundtrack.
JP—You nail it when you say Wendy Carlos; she’s a huge inspiration for this record. As a matter of fact, on Portamento, one of our B-sides was simply called “Wendy”. That kind of music has always played a big role in what we do but this record we really wanted to make that apparent. We shut stuff off, we don’t listen to bands. The only thing that we really were inspired by, other than visuals, is soundtracks.
When we got together to start this record, we were like, ‘What do we want it to sound like?’ and [Jonny said] he wanted to make a really gritty, trashy guitar record. And I said, ‘I want it to sound like a glorious synthesized soundtrack’…So we just decided to take those two completely opposite ideas and smush them together.
JG—When we got together to really start this record, we were like, ‘What do we want it to sound like?’ and [Jonny said] he wanted to make a really gritty, trashy guitar record. And I said, ‘I want it to sound like a glorious synthesized soundtrack,’ like The Sound of Music with a synthesizer or something. So we just decided to take those two completely opposite ideas and smush them together and say, ‘That’s our new sound, that’s gonna be Encyclopedia.’
G—In the past, people have tried to categorize you with certain bands and I felt like there were more obvious touchstones with your previous albums. But with this one, it’s harder to pin down. With this combination of two styles, there’s not a lot that I can think of that matches up with it.
JP—We’ve been hearing that a lot, [people being] not sure how to classify this record. For us, that gives us the ultimate joy.
JG—I think a lot of reviewers take it as a negative though, which is crazy to me. They think that we’re really lost right now, and we feel like we’ve really found ourselves.
