The Drums
The Drums

THE REVIEW

Listening to this album, a thought forcefully creeps into our savvy audiophile minds and goes something like this: "It's about time, it's about time, it's about time..."

After a decade that (re)did all the decades except its own (and clearly this is the essence of the now-concluded decade, whether you like it or not), among the myriad of revivals, you might be surprised that not everything revival-worthy has been revived. Not all genres (and especially subgenres) have been reimagined in a hipster-postmodern-digital way. However, if you have patience and faith in the "historical cycles and recurrences" of Vico’s memory, you won’t be disappointed.

So, here we are in the summer of 2010, and another gap is finally filled: I'm talking about the bittersweet new-wave of the early Cure albums.

Where had that admirable skill in making songs that are essentially gloomy but paradoxically cheerful and full of life disappeared to for so long? It's hard to say: certainly, it can be said that the spirit - whose manifesto remains the essential "Boys Don’t Cry" - has finally returned. On the other side of the ocean, however.

The Drums come from Brooklyn, their faces are like a**es, the singer live mimics Ian Curtis quite a bit, and ultimately, they are the kind of posers everyone dreams of beating up. Yet - putting prejudice aside - their debut album is a real blast. A lethal mix of new-wave, synth-pop, and radio-friendliness à la Beach Boys, which, if it didn't sound too silly, I’d almost define as "bright wave".

Explaining this album isn't difficult: there are 12 tracks, all lasting 3 minutes and 30 seconds (the international standard for pop music), they are all the same but also a bit different, and not a single one is to be discarded. It would almost seem that, for a debut, this quartet has sold their soul to Brian Wilson, so surprisingly mature is the quality of the whole.

And so it begins - track-by-track in a flash -:

"Best Friend" merrily sings "you were my best friend, but then you died";

A deep synth riffs joyfully on "Me and The Moon";

Big single: "Let's Go Surfing", whistles, choruses, and surf (who do they remind you of?);

"I thought my life would be easier, instead of harder, without youuuuuu", with a pan flute coloring here and there, nothing more to add;

Then more endless gay choruses over obsessive drums and a strong desire to leave the city;

Then, here’s a piece where they sing "forever and ever" and the background chorus repeats "and ever and ever and ever and eveeer";

It continues with "Down By The Water" a heart-wrenching ballad in a confidential style that brings tears to your eyes;

Straight beat shakes up things and fresh splashes of guitar reassure us that "It Will All End In Tears";

And, well, "We Tried", but we didn’t succeed, so we might as well listen to a lucidly melancholic piece à la "Sloop John B" to console ourselves;

"I Need Fun In My Life" reminds us of the beauty (and truth) of banal titles and unobtrusive keyboards that play warm riffs during the choruses;

"I’ll Never Drop My Sword", instead, updates some of The Magnetic Fields’ more electronic pieces to the 2010s and the crystalline joy of not wanting to give up and getting back up after a fall;

Finally, "The Future" is a stadium ballad (but a tiny, cutesy one) with an insistent music box that ignites spirits while tucking them in.

And there it ends. And instinctively, you start over, because if I wasn't clear in my minimal descriptions, this is an album of such immediacy that you don’t even realize you’ve finished it. That immediacy that only pop songs from the '60s knew how to offer here is perfectly united with the emotional depth of the post-punk period (but without Robert Smith's perpetually desolate voice).

An album that’s beautiful, dense, full-bodied, and made to last: different from all those releases that overwhelmed us in the last decade and that we forgot about before we even finished the first listen. This, on the other hand, is worth all your indie-currency and at least a 4.5 out of 5.

Finally, after 31 years, the boys are (not) crying again.