For one reason or another, Australia's the Drones have yet to make much of a splash outside of their home continent. The band has released consistently strong albums since its 2000 inception and garnered high praise from their countrymen-- up against Aussie faves Wolfmother and the Go-Betweens, they won the inaugural Australian Music Prize for their 2005 record Wait Long by the River and the Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By-- but still are mostly unknown to European and American listeners. It's hard to say precisely what accounts for this disconnect, but I propose a name change might be in order: there's nothing drone-y about what these guys do.
Despite what their moniker suggests, the Drones are a high-velocity garage-blues act-- something like Gun Club with punk swapped out for capital-H hard rock. They're traditional in the way Black Lips are-- straightforward instrumentation, a healthy nod to the past-- but manage to dodge the pitfalls of revisionism with an unusual mixture of brute force, bleak lyrical content, and singer Gareth Liddiard's distinctive caterwaul. (Dude can impressively shift from a bark to a shriek to a roar in one solitary breath.) It's an intense concoction that casual indie fans will probably find abrasive, but a degree of unfriendliness seems to be part of the group's M.O.
Previous records emphasized the Drones' fierceness with mostly aggressive tracks, and while Havilah (their fifth) trades some of that for slower, dirge-like pieces, they start the album with a bang... literally. Opener "Nail It Down" rumbles for a few minutes before launching a violent guitar-and-drum assault. That energy carries over to "The Minotaur", a song that's equally wicked sounding but contains moments of well-placed melody to keep it from becoming overbearing. Oddly catchy, these songs aren't totally dissimilar from the harder-edged moments of bands such as Queens of the Stone Age, but with the Drones' oft-stated distaste for the human race and lyrics like "People are a waste of food/ They're only ever happy when they're burying their friends" (from "Oh My"), it's hard to imagine them getting played on KROQ anytime soon.
Havilah broadens the Drones' sonic palette and continues to carve out a sound that is uniquely theirs, and in that sense it's an accomplishment, but wrestling with the record's dark subject matter makes it a difficult listen. This is especially the case on unhurried, acoustic tracks like "I Am the Supercargo" where the vocals sit upfront in the mix and there's no captivating rock melody to latch onto. There's nothing to feel chipper about "The Drifting Housewife", for instance, where Liddiard contemplates a failed marriage over a twang-y Neil Young-inspired ballad. "I was more worried about taxes when my lovely red-eyed bride became a hairsplitting believer that I should be vilified," he sings. Nope, that doesn't sound like a healthy relationship.
The record's back-end is where most of its slower material resides-- the very dark stretch that begins with "Cold and Sober" and closes with "Penumbra" will be the most trying for listeners. These tracks (and the lingering, amber-hued "Luck in the Odd Numbers" between them) show the group at their most frustrated and fatigued. Lyrically, at least, it's pretty brutal stuff. Closer "Your Acting's Like the End of the World" finally provides some light at the end of the tunnel, where Liddiard sings, "All this doom and gloom has got to me/ I can't take another punch", and we're with him there, but surely some won't make it to that point. I'd suggest trying to stick it out, though. Enduring this album is a bit like making it through a powerful-but-disturbing film. It might make you uncomfortable and you'll probably never watch it again, but you're at least glad you saw it.
