When The Drums first arrived in the UK two years ago, clad in Letterman jackets and waving tambourines, they brought with them the perfect pop oxymoron of sad songs disguised in upbeat melodies. They polarised opinion but sharply rose to prominence, opening for the likes of Florence and the Machine and The Maccabees, seemingly becoming a permanent fixture in gig listings this side of the Atlantic. After a summer cramming in festivals, they headed back to America and, on the eve of their homecoming tour, announced guitarist Adam Kessler was to quit. In the time since then, plenty more has happened – including new album Portamento. Rhian Daly met Jonathan Pierce and Jacob Graham to discuss changes and ideas behind the record.
A lot’s changed since you were last over here. Obviously there’s the new album but you’ve also not only lost one band member but added some new ones too. How do you think these new additions have changed your live show?
Jacob: I think it’s changed an awful lot. Before we added them, we were doing things a lot differently. We wanted to fill out the sound. We’d been [performing with a backing track] for almost 2 years now and we just wanted to switch things up to make things more interesting for us. I think it’s made the whole thing a lot more exciting. It’s a little risky because none of us are very good musicians so the whole thing could just fall apart any minute.
Jonathan: The worst thing was there was no sense of nervous quality to the show. I really like when a band looks a little undone, just like a little fearful maybe. The worst is when a band comes on stage and they just strum their guitar and spit near the audience, just really full of ego and there’s nothing interesting about that. Right now, because we have new songs and the new album, we’re nervous the whole time but that keeps us on our toes and it makes the show more interesting for us and hopefully for other people.
Connor and Jacob have switched instruments too – why did you do that?
Jonathan: Well, we lost Adam [Kessler, former guitarist) and Jacob wanted to move to synthesizer so it would just be me out of the original members at the front. We just thought about kids coming to the shows to see The Drums and The Drums are all at the back of the stage and they can’t see us. Connor’s first instrument is guitar anyway so he moved up front and we got a drummer and a bassist who are both friends of ours. It feels so much more tangible and every show is slightly different.
Last time you were in the UK you were playing big venues like the Forum and o2 Academies but this week you’re playing much smaller places. Is there more pressure playing in more intimate settings? Do you prefer it?
Jonathan: It’s something we’ve been looking forward to. We’ve always preferred a smaller intimate setting. I think we always will. We’ve spent our lives locking ourselves in bedrooms as children. Little clubs in little basements feel like a special club that’s cut off from the rest of the world. It’s really special. That’s always the best feeling.
Jacob: There’s always a stranger kind of nervousness in a small venue. I think it’s much easier to perform in front of a large group than in front of three people staring directly at you. It’s so awkward. We’re more used to it because none of our bands have been successful at all until now in terms of attention so for the past 15 years we’ve been playing shows to 15 or 20 people but it never becomes less awkward. It’s much easier to play when you can’t focus on anyone’s face.
Ok, so moving on to Portamento. It seems, to me at least, more adventurous than your first; more unpredictable, I guess, in terms some of the sounds on the record and even some of the melodies and the patterns they form. When you were making it were you consciously aiming to do something a bit different to The Drums?
Jonathan: We wanted to be consistent with the first record as far as possible. The first album was just straight up unapologetic pop. This one we wanted to kind of relax the rules ever so slightly, not too much, just to let the song be exactly what it wanted to be. I think some of our songs may have suffered from the very rigid parameters we set, like maybe the chorus should have been shorter or there should have been a longer bridge but we wanted it all to be 3 minutes or less so the song had to fit into that. Now, it’s about relaxing it a bit – making sure it’s still a pop song but letting it breathe a little more. Because of that mentality, the songs sort of wrote themselves in a really natural way which was really exciting for us.
And, like with your first one, you self-produced this album. Was there ever any suggestion of getting someone else in to do it? I know you’re quite hands-on with all areas of the band.
Jonathan: It was our only option, as far as we were concerned. For us, getting a proper producer is like adding another member or changing our band name. It’s exciting to be a part of our own process.
Jacob: A producer just seemed very redundant and unnecessary. None of us want to just show up, talk about the songs, record them and then leave. We’re all so nit-picky, having another guy in there would be…
Jonathan: We have a hard enough time agreeing as it is. The only thing that might help would be a really authoritative person but Jacob, Connor and I hate any authority. We always have so it would be literally be the biggest shitshow on earth.
Jacob: We’d probably just murder him.
Probably for the best not to get one then! So you’ve said that you wanted to make an album consistent with the first – how do you see Portamento sitting alongside The Drums? Do you see them as particularly different records or as consistent as you wanted them to be?
Jonathan: [Portamento is] a much more personal album, dealing with reality, whereas the first album was much more escapist. We’ve spent our lives escaping and I think we’re ready to move on and be honest. I think our first album would have been more honest had we known people were going to listen to it. It wouldn’t have been to impress people but to just be more ourselves.
Jacob: I think I like Portamento now because it’s new and exciting but I think if I look back 20 years from now I probably won’t have a favourite album. I’ll probably have favourite songs but I’ll probably look at the albums as being this one long, continuous volume of work.
Jonathan: That’s the goal, just to be consistent. We’re never going to change too much.
It’s only been just over a year since your first album was released. Why the quick turnaround between records?
Jacob: It was just something to do to keep it fresh for us and not be like ‘The Drums are this album’. A lot of bands really associate themselves with their first album and then 4 years go by and they go to make another and start freaking out. I think that’s where the difficult second album connotation comes from because they get so wrapped up in the identity of that first record that they just get lost when they go to make the second. It just felt natural to us and there’s no point in leaving years between albums anyway. We probably won’t be around for 5 years.
Portamento is out now on Island Records. The Drums play the following UK dates this winter:
Mon 28-Nov Birmingham Institute The Library
Tue 29-Nov Newcastle O2 Academy
Wed 30-Nov Leeds Metropolitan University
Sat 03-Dec Glasgow O2 ABC
Sun 04-Dec Edinburgh Picture House
Mon 05-Dec Cambridge Junction
Tue 06-Dec Portsmouth Pyramids Centre
Thu 08-Dec BristolO2 Academy
Fri 09-Dec London O2 Shepherds Bush Empire
Sat 10-Dec Manchester Ritz
