The Drums continue to perfect their 1980s-inspired indie pop formula on their latest album, while adding some dark humor to the mix.
Yes, that is “Abysmal Thoughts” in quotations—the Drums, those throwback-pop stalwarts, are using their fourth album’s title as an act of academic citation. It’s an unspoken truth that both indie pop and Western philosophy try to address the same fundamental questions: Why does love feel so good? Why does pretty much everything else blow? Though it’s unclear where frontman and songwriter Jonny Pierce picked up the titular phrase, it is found repeatedly in Nietzsche’s gift to alt-bros, his 1891 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It’s variously translated as “abyss-deep thoughts” and stands in for the awareness that the world is larger and more horrible than we can ever truly understand. To Nietzsche, this is an unavoidable part of being human, but so are art and lightness. The necessity of pairing happy and dark thoughts has always been a hallmark of Pierce’s work. The Drums’ 2010 debut single “Best Friend” captures that idea frankly: “You were my best friend, and then you died.” They keep up that duality on “Abysmal Thoughts,” but with a bit more seriousness and attention to detail than on previous albums.
Pierce has always been upfront about the influence the Drums have drawn from indie pop favorites the Wake and others from the Factory and Creation Records scenes in 1980s UK. And this album features plenty of the glittery guitars beloved by indie pop purists, most notably on the single “Blood Under My Belt,” which goes spelunking in a chord with a few different pedals. A common complaint about the Drums’ previous albums was that the production was fatally thin, their anthemic songs sounding a mile wide and an inch deep. It made them seem like they missed the point of why the Wake were so damn good—their magnum opus Here Comes Everybody is a work of gentle, crisp production, where the guitars are kaleidoscopically layered, and the drum machines have almost organic imperfections. Here, Pierce takes that legacy more seriously, and it’s most striking on the margins: the skittering snare on “Head of the Horse,” the sly saxophone on “Your Tenderness,” or the Chelsea Girls-evoking woodwinds on “If All We Share (Means Nothing).”
There are also the indelible markings of the Smiths all over, especially in the way the songs make room for more complicated basslines and slippery arpeggiated chords than your average rock band. That being said, there really isn’t any anxiety of influence on this album; Pierce is assured as a songwriter. From the beginning, his songs have featured frenetic rhythm sections and lyrics that split the difference between hyper-specific and utilitarian. (Looking back now, even his old band Elkland’s notable 2005 single “Apart” is recognizable as a Pierce song.) His unconventional bard’s spirit comes out on the upbeat and fuzzy “Shoot the Sun Down,” whose chorus consists mainly of the line “I put a blanket over my face” as a strangely universal way to describe a terrible hangover.
Like the best bands of the C86 era, the Drums craft these songs by taking a basic template and perfecting it. “Abysmal Thoughts”distinguishes itself by adding in a dark sense of humor. “Are U Fucked” essentially takes the chord progression from the Cure’s “Killing an Arab,” marries it to disco percussion, and really rides hard on the title in its refrain: “Are you feeling fucked, are you feeling fucked right now?” The result is a would-be a banger at a party that you don’t especially want to be invited to.
In drawing inspiration from cult bands, the Drums are starting to make records for an audience that is looking for something pretty specific—that particular balance of darkness and light, of guitar effects and tight songwriting. On “Abysmal Thoughts,” they do it exceptionally well. The title track is the last song, and it repeats that phrase again and again, Pierce’s voice in a gospel cadence, a cowbell and a slide whistle accenting it, letting a listener know the good will come back again.
