The Drones: Cut You Like a Knife
By Team JamBase Apr 7, 2009 • 7:22 pm PDT
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But instead of the destruction and scars left in the wake of a razor, The Drones let us feel that pain and experience our twisted reality without the consequences of an emergency room and/or padded cell. And just as important, they show us a sliver of light creeping in under the horizon, pointing to the hope of brighter days, even if in the distance.
The seeds of the band were planted in Australia’s isolated West Coast city of Perth in the late ’90s and began to bloom after relocating to Melbourne. The group released their self-titled debut EP in 2001 and followed it up with 2002’s full-length Here Come The Lies and eventually their 2005 breakout release, Wait Long By The River & The Bodies Of Your Enemies Will Float By, which garnered them the 2006 Australian Music Prize. On the heels of their big award, The Drones created 2006’s stellar Gala Mill and continued to tour the world, gaining recognition in every corner of the globe.
For Havilah (released in the States on February 17, 2009 by ATP Records), Gareth Liddiard and his wife/bassist Fiona Kitschin decided to record the album in their newfound home deep in the remote foothills of Victoria. After a few months of writing material, Liddiard and Kitschin invited guitarist Dan Luscombe (who replaced original guitarist Rui Pereira in 2006) and drummer Michael Noga into the forest to begin rehearsals.
Speaking to JamBase over email while wild fires threatened his home, Gareth Liddiard opens up about the new album, the band’s roots, sharing The Drones with his wife, playing live (The Drones are on tour in the U.S. now, dates available here), the opium trade and why sometimes the knife feels good.
JamBase: The album title Havilah is a strong, heavily religious word. Why did you name the album that?
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JamBase: Sometimes I feel your music has almost a Biblical bend and power, but not necessarily religious, maybe a raw creation essence to it. Has this ever crossed your mind? And if so, any thoughts as to why or where it comes from?
Gareth Liddiard: Sometimes if you’re singing or writing about some historical character religious things pop up. And I guess we can get pretty epic in an incendiary kind of way. Otherwise, I don’t know. Religion stems from a biological lack of a healthy bullshit meter. Believing that the wind in the bushes is a tiger beats believing that the tiger in the bush is the wind, you know? So, if you wonder why Earth is populated with idiots it’s cause it’s meant to be. It’s possibly that kind of belief system that puts me on a stage night after night. So, maybe that’s it.
Did the album title come before the songs were recorded or after?
Afterwards, I think. The only thing in this line of work that’s harder than making a record is naming it. This is the second record in a row where we’ve named it after the place it was recorded in. If anyone has a problem with that then they should give it a try themselves – none of this self-titled bullshit either. It’s not easy.
Is there a general storyline or arc to this album, anything that carries the songs from one to another?
Well, it was all written and recorded in Havilah. We only had three months to get it all done, so I wrote the tunes in the first, we rehearsed in the second and recorded and everything else after that. It was all written in the same headspace and in the same geography. So, if there’s any kind of arc it would be where it’s coming from rather than where it’s all going. There’s no direct narrative links or anything but it was all written under the same cloud. A fluffy little cloud that was in a big fucking rush to meet a deadline.
What can you tell me about the inspiration or general approach to this album – lyrically, musically and otherwise?
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Did the house where the album was recorded influence the music and/or the recording in any way?
It’s made of hard wood and mud-brick and it has big rooms with high ceilings, too. It’s pretty much a recording studio anyway. Our nearest neighbor is two miles away so we can do whatever whenever. Our engineer Burke [Reid] had a fine time messing around with all sorts of different approaches. This must be the first record to have had a diesel budget factored in cause we don’t have electricity. It influenced a lot of things, not least of all with its beauty. It’s kind of like Montana or Colorado.
How do you feel this album is different or perhaps an evolution from The Gala Mill?
Gala Mill was deliberately made into this monotone thing from go to woe. The entire record has a certain thread running right through it and it has a great consistency. When we make records we always wind up going against what we did last time, just to keep things interesting for us. So with the new one, we tried to make each tune really different from the rest. There are tons of different sounds and ideas flying around in there. It wound up being really consistent in its inconsistency.
Continue reading for more on The Drones…
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I read that you said Havilah has a more positive message and is easier to get through than The Gala Mill. Can you elaborate on that?
It’s not clinically depressed like Gala Mill. Our records have always been a grind, not that there’s anything wrong with that. We just wanted to do something different. This one lets you in a little more, whereas our past efforts seem [to react] shitty with you for sticking them on the turntable.
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In a very general way we work by a shared premise which sort of goes like this: Fun House or Electric Ladyland are pretty much as good as rock ‘n’ roll is going to get, right? Good, stop listening to fucking stupid rock ‘n’ roll and listen to something good for once. It works really well. It means you actually learn something. Like what Nina Simone says: “I only listen to the masters.” That makes perfect sense. Maybe not to George Bush but it works for us and a lot of other people, too. Trust the experts and you’ll be ok.
Do you tend to play similar sets night to night, or do you switch things up – both how you play the songs and what songs you play?
Usually we’ll switch around a lot for a few nights until we find a set that really works, then we’ll stick to it until it drives us nuts. It’s funny talking about sets. It always makes me think of tennis and tennis is so un-rock ‘n’ roll. Tennis players are really creepy. I reckon they don’t have any genitals.
What’s your favorite aspect of playing live?
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Working with your life partner can be both a blessing and a curse. What are the best and worst aspects of creating music with your partner/lover?
I’d like to think I’d always be getting laid after a show regardless of my marital status, so we’ll leave sex out of it. Firstly, it’s great having a girl in your band. I don’t think we’d still be around if the band was all male, or all hetero male. Girls are good at reminding you that you’re acting like a dickhead, which is most the time when you’re a chap. But as far as working with Fiona goes, it’s actually really nice. We get along about 90-percent of the time. We’re very lucky. She’s very funny and I’m always amazed at how well she tolerates the three of us. The worst part is that when we’re all having an argument and I’m in agreement with Fiona – the guys think I’m pussy whipped. But, I would now like to say to them, in public, using this interview on the Web, this: How does it feel to be fucking homeless, you stupid retarded fucking cunts?
“Luck In Odd Numbers” [off Havilah] is a long, weird, cool-ass song. What can you tell me about how it was written and the inspiration behind it – both musically and lyrically?
It’s based around a whole tone, diminished type scale. It was written with the rest of the tunes down in Havilah. I was reading about this ridiculous Pythagorean theory about uneven numbers being lucky. I had always been under the impression that this guy was smart. He must have been going through a breakdown or something at the time. Anyway, the first half of the song is about good fortune. It’s all based around where we live back in the old times, as is the second half, which is all about bad luck. The last half has this guy in it, Joe Byrne, who was a member of a much mythologized gang of Australian outlaws called the Kelly Gang. He used to roam around our part of the world and much has been said about the fact that he was quite well educated and could speak Chinese pretty well. It’s always interested me how no one cottons onto the possibility that rather than being a smart, liberal and tolerant guy, he was probably only after the opium that the Chinese folks were selling. The Kelly Gang was a bunch of impoverished thieves, bank robbers and cop killers and hard drugs were readily available right in their neighborhood. Why wouldn’t they use them? Nearly every other impoverished criminal desperado these days does. The Kelly Gang has been canonized to a point where it’s all just bullshit; but that’s just part of the song. What happened to Joe Byrne was pretty sad. He wasn’t any older than 24 when he was killed. It has to be the most convoluted song ever written. Not something to be proud of.
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That one was written in Mexico before we went home to start Havilah. We were the only foreigners in our area due to the drug violence that was going on around there at the time [and still is]. It was anarchy when we got there and martial law when we left. 12 or 15 people were shot one day in our little town while we were there and the horror stories just kept coming. So, we did what anyone would do and stocked up on booze, Xanax and fireworks and tried making lemonade out of our lemon. That song reared its head sometime during all of that. It’s sung from the point of view of John Frum, who probably never existed and who unwittingly started what are now known as the cargo cults in Tana and Papua New Guinea. It’s a long story and probably best left Googled. Really fascinating stuff, and again, a totally pretentious and convoluted song.
What artists/bands would you consider to be your biggest influences?
Hmmm…lots. Early on it would have been stuff like Led Zep, Hendrix, The Doors. Then, Einstürzende Neubauten, Suicide, Black Flag, Bad Brains. Australian stuff like Beasts of Bourbon, X, The Surrealists, Birthday Party, The Dirty Three, The Bad Seeds, Tendrils. I was always into jazz. Free jazz and the captive stuff, too. Bela Bartok, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and tons of other classical stuff. Stuff like Toumani Diabate from Kenya. And flamenco. Guys like Sabicas and the Montoya’s and Niña de la Puebla. Shitloads of different stuff. The great singers like Karen Dalton, Ella Fitzgerald and Edith Piaf. There is too much music. Sabicas is my all time favorite musician though.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of this life you’ve chosen?
Getting paid for it. That sounds stupid but the day we quit our job cause the band was making money, I felt like Elvis. That’s always been my idea of success. It still blows my mind.
The Drones are on tour now, dates available here.
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