Photo: Tom Gilhespy
Words should always be juxtaposed carefully. As an example, unless you really want to scare away a potential audience, it’s probably best not to invoke an image of the Grateful Dead singing sea shanties and giving it the hey nonny no by describing your trio as a folk/jam band. It’s the sort of thing that could easily result in people sitting out your set in the bar next door, firmly convinced that you have nothing listenable to offer without bothering to find out for themselves. But duty calls…
Kes Band are more Floyd-meets-pixies than folky Deadheads. You’ll notice that lower case P, however. The pixies we’re talking about here are the sort you’ll find playing pan pipes in the woods rather than the loudQUIETloud indie heroes. The Kes Band approach is more stopSTARTstop, with the rhythm section regularly dropping out to allow their lead singer/guitarist to make his point a little more clearly. Karl E Scullin, the front man, has a vocal style best described as idiosyncratic – or perhaps just affected – but if you can get past that the music is mostly interesting. The framework is solid, and the details keep changing. There’s a sense of humour too. At the end of their last number Scullin and his bass player wind themselves up for archetypal rock star leaps that contradict everything going before.
The Drones aren’t quite punk, nor garage, nor blues, nor country, nor avant garde, but come close to all of those at different times. You could perhaps sum their music up by saying that its dynamic is LOUDloudREALLYFUCKINGLOUD. Even in their quieter moments they’re so intense that they feel as if they’re about to split your head in two with the sheer ferocity of it all. Lyrically, they come close to being a modern folk band, at least in that their songs are often detailed (if ambiguous) narratives on historical subjects that demand to be explored and understood. Murderers in the Australian bush, radioactive cows, cargo cults, abortion, divorce, the dead end of humanity – that sort of thing.
It’s been reported recently that Gareth Liddiard, The Drones’ erudite but always passionate frontman, deliberately toned things down a tad when writing the material for their fourth album, Havilah. Not for the sake of the audience, particularly, but to make it easier to play, in the sense of being less draining, physically and emotionally. You wouldn’t necessarily notice it listening to the CDs, without making a direct comparison, but there’s no doubt that tonight’s show feels a little more inviting than many of their previous ones. There’s a much larger audience too, compared to previous Adelaide gigs, and the band are clearly delighted about that. The Drones are still far too severe to ever be as big as they are good, but it’s great to see them pulling a crowd that’s numerous as well as enthusiastic.
With Drones’ songs generally on the long side – there are always so many ideas to pack in – we only get twelve in the set, mostly from Havilah. Nail It Down is a great opener, just as it is on the album. Despite the quality and ambition of The Minotaur, I Am The Supercargo and the rest, Shark Fin Blues – the first track on their second album – is still one of the highlights. It’s also the song that announced just how serious and important a band they are.
Despite Liddiard’s intention of taking things a little easier, there’s little tonight to suggest that he’s actually doing so. Frankly, there’s little to suggest that he even knows how to. But the intensity has been leavened slightly by a change in the band. Dan Luscombe, who was previously one of the mainstays in Paul Kelly’s band, has a cleaner, gentler guitar style than Rui Pereira and it’s perhaps Luscombe as much as Liddiard who’s responsible for making The Drones seem that little bit more accessible. But let’s not get carried away here. The closing number, I Don’t Ever Want To Change, is perhaps as close to a pop song as The Drones have strayed, though it’s also an exhilarating, breakneck slice of garage rock. Tonight it’s been reinvented, shorn of its hooks, and there’s only the grunge and depression left. So much for toning things down.
The Drones In Adelaide:
