It’s not been a smooth year for The Drums; album 2, ‘Portamento’ reaches less of the avail that album 1 got, a band member spontaneously leaves because he wants to go home and on top of all that people still heckle to request the advert-friendly ‘Lets Go Surfing’. Poor guys hey? They came on tonight to newbie ‘What You Were’ and it kicked off a pretty balanced new/old set. Watching The Drums live is strange because all the band enter before lead singer Jonathan Pierce. On their last tour when they went around the world showcasing their upbeat carefree debut, he came on with dancing like Travolta which sort of justified his delayed entry. This time round, he just came on and started singing. Nothing wrong with it and he made up for lost boogie later in the show but it signified the slight change in The Drums, it’s not as fun as it used to be.
As soon as the opener ended and Pierce said to the hipster crowd “This song’s about my best friend” the energy reached a high that it kept up for the evening. The bouncy break beats of their debut put everyone back in a time when rolling up your Chinos was nearly original. These songs have such colossal choruses – tracks like ‘Book Of Stories’, ‘Down By The Water’ and even recent single ‘Money’. The Drums are fantastic song writers as they can melt that bittersweet melancholy lyricism with some of the chirpiest beats in music. They made it clear that they were coming to the end of a UK tour and while the show was as energetic and fun as Drums shows are meant to be, I think they may have been ever so slightly flaking. When Pierce eventually used a guitar interlude to get his moves on, he was pretty breathless afterwards and it is important to remember they aren’t touring whilst riding high on the biggest hype 2009 saw anymore, ‘Portamento’ has made them earn their worth a bit more which isn’t such a bad thing. It is clear that album number 2 isn’t as good as the first. This came across most potently during ‘I Need A Doctor‘ which, by any standards is a pretty dreadful tune that is a crashing trough of ‘Portamento‘. What was most odd was that the band seemed so much more happy to be playing older material but there was still no sign of the infamous ‘Let’s Go Surfing‘ to the point where one crowd member was shot down by Pierce for requesting it too much. “Please let us perform our program” he said. Very self-righteous for a band who seemed to revel in the sing along-s for all the other hits. The show ended with an encore including the thrillingly whiny ‘It Will All End In Tears’ and they closed the night with new track ‘Searching For Heaven’. It was a really good show but it breaks my heart to say The Drums might be lacking their first album charm.
When I last saw the band there was a real anti-pop irony to them and their ballsy live show crushed any criticisms of a one-dimensional LP. A year or so on and our Brooklyn townies have admitted to nearly packing it all in during the making of ‘Portamento’, that would have been a crying shame however I feel a temporary lacuna in the story of The Drums might have done them some good. They can still indisputably get a crowd at fever pitch and their debut still holds within it some indie treasures but the follow up to this debut might have been a little rushed and the tour seemed to have been the culmination of a fairly rocky year for a band who can, and eventually will offer a whole lot more.
