Pay no mind to the misleading name: The Drones are in no way a noise band, Tony Conrad-derived, or psychedelic. Actually, on first listen the Australian quartet may seem like little more than an unhinged bluesy garage outfit-- but that's because career music fans are too often trained to shun things that work within genre definitions. Serious, give these fuckers time and they'll rip out your eardrums, perhaps even your heart.
Vocalist/guitarist Gareth Liddiard and guitarist Rui Pereira found a drummer and bassist and formed the group in Melbourne in early 2000. They put out an eponymous EP in 2001 and a year later released the full-length debut, Here Come the Lies (which tellingly included a cover of the Cramps' "New Kind of Kick"). Over the next three years they only put out two 7" singles. Now, kinda out of nowhere, comes their amped sophomore dispatch, Wait Long By the River and the Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By.
Playing together for a half-decade has resulted in shivery tightness: Notes bend and expand just as a snare wakes up; the bass adds an exclamation to a vocal line. They have the boundless cohesion and energy of X or the Gun Club. Judging them against other Australian acts, you'll find more than a bit of Kim Salmon's Scientists (see, for instance, their 1983 single "We Had Love") and, of course, the Birthday Party (albeit with less all-over-the-place percussion, horns, and avant tendencies).
Despite the band's meshing, the focus rests squarely on vocalist/guitarist Gareth Liddiard. A tall, lean rocker who flails on floors and swings his guitar over his head, Liddiard's reminiscent of the Laughing Hyenas' John Brannon in his willingness to shred his vocal chords. Fast forward to his bloody howl on the poppy, Ponys-like "Baby" to get an idea of the scratchy decibels.
Lyrically, the Drones' world's crammed with drunkenness, night sweats, and suicide notes. The album opens with "Shark Fin Blues", one of the best rockers of the year, a seemingly endless path of riffs and dynamics and a good introduction to Liddiard's nihilistic subject matter. The song's protagonist is stuck on a sinking ship, watching sharks "coming fin by fin" toward the wreckage "like slicks of ink." He thinks he sees Jonah, there's an albatross á la Samuel Taylor Colerdige's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", and the captain's "laid up in the galley like a dried out mink...dying of thirst." He admits he's going to be alone, asking "Why don't you get down in the sea/ Turn the water red like you want to be?" And there you are, losing oxygen sans friends, all by your lonesome.
The other thing the band does is slow. things. down. They take their time with pieces like "Sitting on the Edge if the Cryin'" and "The Best You Can Believe In", which closes with smears of vibrato distortion and posits that there isn't much in which you can have faith. Variations on this crisis are echoed throughout: For instance, in the aforementioned "Baby," Liddiard admits, "Man, I won't ever be free/ Though alone drunk on a beach/ Ain't such a bad way to be." The aptly titled "Another Rousing Chorus You Idiots!!!" Perhaps the track most structurally redolent of Laughing Hyenas' slow-burn blues lets it be known that "We were shat from wormholes...there's no use for order."
It's also a solidly working-class record, discussing the walk home from the factory or, as in "Locust", sketching a depressing port town. In what amounts to the town's love story, the protagonist's first girl, daughter of drunken war veteran, leaves a suicide note. One of the more atmospheric tracks, it opens with moments of feedback and single piano notes while Liddiard pensively intones, "Georgie, I can't stop drinking/ Seems like every time I can't stop thinking." The tracks ends under a distorted gale of malleted piano strings, frenzied bows, and a tidal whirlpool of guitar noise.
Albums that stick come in various shades: Something surprisingly ambitious like Sufjan Steven's Illinois, meta-smart like Art Brut's debut, as beautifully honed as Othrelm's OV, or as magnificently unrelenting as Sunn 0)))'s Black One. Wait Long By the River sounds nothing like any of these, and won't win awards for originality. But it could garner some props for brilliance. There's nothing wrong with being a solid whiskey-drunk rock band. But really, the greatest thing about such a pessimistic bunch of sots (with a truly ecstatic spitter) is the realization that they're too smart to relegate drowning to one's enemies. Hey, if you hang out by the river long enough, you'll most likely spot a couple of friends, too.
