The Drums Portamento. The Drums are really pretty great. I know...I can't even convince myself. But they are, really. They are certainly not cool. They exude earnestness. They seem manufactured, perfect haircuts, sharp clothes, contrived controversy??? If in the future someone came out and proclaimed that they had written all of the songs for the Drums but that he was forced to toil like David Cameron's treadle pump boy, impecunious and in obscurity because he didn't fit the image then well I might find that more convincing even than my own proclamation. In my last entry on the Drums I made disparaging comments about Anthony Powell. This was previous to my having read the first three volumes of Dance to the Music of Time. Now of course I want to marry Anthony Powell's worm riddled remains and name our first baby She-Evelyn. I was young, I made mistakes. Yes, the Drums debut album was only a year ago. I have aged dearly. This is the record where the singer says all of those things he meant to say on the first album. He's just not very interesting. But it is the sound that is important. "I've seen the world and there's no hell, and I believe that when we die we die". Profound. Sounds Assyrian. Now that I am planning on reading the entire collection of Will Durant's essays on civilization I can sound convincing when I compare pop song lyrics to Near East cultures. The Assyrians seem somewhat minor actually and yet a reference to their culture It makes me appear all the more obscurantist and this, by my reckoning, appears to make me all the more impressive. Of course this song may not be Assyrian at all but confident of the level of historical knowledge of my audience I will make the claim without fear of the "but I've read well and I've heard them said a hundred times, maybe less, maybe more" gotcha moment. This is not a challenge. But the typical Drums fan is the anti-me and wears product in their hair, loves Teen Nick and thinks Charlie Rose is sexy. Right? They are a boy band. I've migrated from Will Sergeant in the first entry to Will Durant. I have evolved. The song titles are very direct. The song about not having any money is called Money, there is one about not knowing how to love called I Don't Know How to Love and one about loving a person that is hard to love called Hard to Love. Time is short, he's moaning about wasting it on the lovely second track, he doesn't have time for you to misinterpret his metaphors. I had an email discussion with a stranger who was upset because I told her that her Robert Frost quote did not mean what she thought it meant. It was the pedantic Drums fan in me. She became very indignant but I thought everyone was aware that the line about "and I--I took the road less travelled" was ironic later justification of the path he chose and that the choice was the insignificant bit of the poem. But I suppose not. I imagine the Drums will have a track about The Road Less Taken on an album at some undetermined point of the future and it will be titled The Road Less Taken and because he is so desperately sincere and aboveboard he'll also misinterpret the meaning. Third track now. There are less guitars on this album. There are more synthesizers. They fired one of the guitarists. They had two, they don't have a bass player, although, there is low end on this album. There are his soporific backing vocals as well, the ones where he adopts his semi-Morrissey affectation on for the live performances on British chat shows. He has a way with a catchy tune. I mean he's basic, he probably thinks Rick Perry is a great thinker and likes RC Cola but that doesn't mean his songs can't embed themselves deep inside of your consciousness so that you are furiously trying to battle the echoes that ring through your mind at inappropriate times. This is the first single. This is Money. I spoiled the surprise by giving away what the song was about earlier. If this was David Scott he would have been more clever, a song about money would not have the word money in it, it would be Rousseau and Hayek arm wrestling on a chesterfield. But David Scott is in Scotland and they have trees and the smell of an ocean less polluted by sunlight and blue skies. Do they have eclectic trees in Scotland? I have planted several on my plot in the last few years, I try to be eclectic but this is Denver, apart from the Riparian Cottonwood trees do not exist. Trees are exotic, in and of themselves. So my White Flowering Redbud is decidedly exotic but then it is not as exotic as a contorted Redbud or a Turkish Filbert and my Prairie Fire Crabapple is semi-exotic because it is multi-stemmed but not as exotic as a Prairie Rose Crabapple. I do like my Bosnian Pine but it may not be long for this world. Tears. I will bury it in the yard and have a suitable service, it may have bean the reincarnation of Chandragupta! Next track. It is about someone he's having difficulty holding his affection for. It reminds a good deal of the first record, the second guitar being replaced by a digital bass line. There are squiggly electronics, did Flood produce this album? Perhaps one of his disciples. When Flood produces your album it is normally an indication that you have completely given up. You've pulled out the checkbook and written an absurdly large number in the box and given the rest to your drug dealer. I don't think the Drums are making that kind of money yet. Next track, maybe the best track, I Don't Know How to Love, I like the vocal treatment, very echoey/tremelo-y. There is a searing quality to his voice, stripped of nuance it just assaults the primeval brain, bypass around the cerebral cortex, and I have a physically pleasant reaction to the music. I can't help myself. They had sense enough to not be on Captured Tracks, why confuse us. Captured Tracks is one of the worst things to happen to music in a long time. I know everyone else loves them. I am wrong. I know. But it all sounds so hopelessly unambitious. I listened to the Soft Set again and it is lounge menace. Bah. I listen to the Drums and I am aware of their meaning in the greater scheme, he's a melancholy Smiths fan with his own band and he's probably an autocrat in charge of every aspect of the band's music and style and I can appreciate that. What is the Soft Set? It's tepid, it is meant to be hip and hundreds of thousands will proclaim it thus but they will be even less convincing than I am when proclaiming the genius that is the Drums but I will say it again--the Drums are gods! Sorta. If they were a tree they'd be an Autumn Blaze Maple, pretty bland, but Soft Set would be something that people would mistake for exotic but is really pretty vanilla like say a Golden Rain Tree which is really just an overgrown weed with lovely lantern seed pods that even the squirrels turn their nose up at. The last track was somewhat fabulous too. He's insistent with his drama. This track started off a bit meh but now the chorus springs to life and it's almost epic. If He Likes It Let Him Do It. Sadly, the title does not hide any deeper connotations within. This track is why they are much more popular in England than in the USA. It's a bit goth. There are probably loads of closeted Fields of the Nephillim fans that worship tracks like this, the hysterical Robert Smith-esque harmony vocals, the spindly guitar, the washed over synthesizers. It is all very grand and self-important, a bit like a 21st century Englishman born to a country whose idea of self-importance has grown as their nation has passed into absolute irrelevance. Americans will sound this quaint in 20 years. Next track. I Need A Doctor because his heart aches for love. It's silly but so were the Field Mice and you are plopping down 50 dollars for a mint copy of the Emma's House 7" aren't you? I still have mine. I'd be willing to part with it for 49 plus shipping and handling. I can't recall the last time I listened to a 7 inch record. I occasionally listen to LPs through my guitar amp. I have been somewhat remiss about taking advantage of the fact that as a homeowner I am able to play records in my basement very loudly without concern for my neighbors with glasses to their ears on the other side of paper thin fire rated walls. I could play the first Trash album very loudly this evening, followed by Palace Brothers Days in the Wake, if my neighbours heard Pushkin percolating through the foundation and through the earth disturbing the Cranberry Girdlers they'd be too moved by the Appalachian melancholy to phone the cops to report me for being a menace to the neighbourhood. I bet Soft Set plugs in his guitar or his computer and plays his music really really loud and yet his neighbors are far too sympathetic to his impotence as a musician that they offer only pity instead of outrage. This is In the Cold, not a Judas Priest cover, a soft synth ambient track, the set-up for the big finish. Last track now, How it Ended, subtle. Is this his Her Handwriting, did some lawyer swoop in and steal away his beloved? Will she reappear on the second record singing songs about how much he still loves her and how he really thinks they should give it another shot and all that he wanted while standing outside her bedroom with his guitar playing demo versions is for her to be happy even if it is not with him. But this is a nice pop song. He's a nice guy. Is he vegan? Will his eyes recede inside of his head? Will they end up on Sub Pop and will he end up dating Sarah Shannon? Questions. But the Drums are dreamy, really.