Rolling Stone album review: The Drones – ‘I See Seaweed’, March 2013
An album review for the April 2013 issue of Rolling Stone Australia. Click the below image for a closer look, or read the review text underneath.
The Drones
I See SeaweedThe Drones explore cracks of beauty and humour amid the darkness on sixth LP
This album’s greatest surprise is saved for the penultimate track, ‘Laika’: an orchestral upswing suddenly blooms from nowhere, and it’s later paired with a harmonising female choir. Neither stylistic decision sits well with The Drones’ reputation for misanthropic, noisy rock ‘n’ roll, but the result is beautiful.
This Melbourne band’s sixth studio album sees keyboardist Steve Hesketh expanding the quartet to a five-piece. His contributions here work well, often providing another layer of rhythmic bedrock to keep these eight tracks grounded; on ‘How To See Through Fog’, though, Hesketh’s tinkering accounts for a memorable lead melody.
Singer Gareth Liddiard is well-known for penning some of the most original rhyming couplets in Australian music; I See Seaweed is no exception. The eight-minute title track alludes to rising seas and overpopulation: “We’re locksteppin’ in our billions,” he sings, “Locksteppin’ in our swarms / Locksteppin’ in the certainty that more need to be born”. It’s the heaviest song – lyrically and musically – that The Drones have released since ‘Jezebel’, the devastating opener to 2006’s Gala Mill.
But it’s not all dark. ‘Nine Eyes’ sees Liddiard using Google Street View to visit his childhood home – accompanied by a sinister groove – and wondering “what kind of asshole drives this lime green Commodore” parked out front; ‘A Moat You Can Stand In’ matches a hilarious skewering of modern religious practices to a taut, thrash-rock tempo that nods at their early material.
I See Seaweed captures a singular band in scintillating form, delivering yet another astounding collection of songs.
Label: MGM
Rating: 4.5 starsKey tracks: ‘I See Seaweed’, ‘Laika’, ‘Nine Eyes’
Elsewhere: I interviewed Gareth Liddiard for The Vine a fortnight before the album’s release