The Drums interview
HUCK catches up with the lead singer and drummer of Brooklyn's hottest new band to talk about why simple music will always be powerful, gimmicks and why they're total control freaks.
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After a brief stint of success with former band Elkland, including a deal with Columbia and a tour supporting synthpop duo Erasure, lead singer of The Drums Jonathan Pierce felt disillusioned with contemporary music and relocated to Florida to get away from it all. But the opposite happened. Two seven-inches and an EP later, The Drums are making quite a vibration in the world of rock 'n' roll.
HUCK: Why did your old band, Elkland, split up?
Jonathan: It was really just a lack of inspiration. Any sort of creativity we had, they really just stomped it out… It also had something to do with us not really knowing ourselves as people I think… It just kind of all fell apart and I think it was because there was no kind of sincerity to the whole thing. There was nothing really real and everything was kind of lost. And what’s so exciting about The Drums for me is I think we’re all kind of finding ourselves as individuals. I think that shows through in the music. We’ve all been in bands our whole lives. It’s almost like this process of elimination, you learn after a while what really makes you tick and what does nothing for you.
So what’s different about The Drums?
Jonathan: With The Drums, we decided to wipe the slate clean. We literally sat down and said ‘Let’s make the band that we’ve always wished existed’. And our whole idea was to go back to the basic idea of what a band is and to simplify it. We kind of feel like now, especially living in Williamsburg, everything is so experimental, hip and edgy and overly interesting. We got really inspired by those girl group sounds of the fifties and sixties, which were really perfect pop songs. They were short and they were simple but they were so powerful. I think the more you can simplify something, the stronger it gets and the more true the message is.
Why the name ‘The Drums’?
Jonathan: We just loved the name instantly. I feel like that name was instantly familiar and it almost has like a faux history to it or something. It feels like ‘The Drums’ is a band that’s been around for twenty years. And it also just sounds like something very classic and timeless, which is an aesthetic we’re always drawn to. So I think the name conjures up that feeling of just four boys in a band playing rock 'n' roll, with these sort of pop nuggets tucked inside… A band is more than the music or the look; it’s kind of a fusion of both of those things. A band, to us, is about the feeling you get, from all the aspects. That’s why we’re so critical of ourselves and that’s why we’re control freaks because we feel like if one of those elements is missing, it’s not the well-rounded thing it should be.
Do you worry about being misinterpreted?
Connor: Well, that’s why you have to be selective and specific about everything because then the concept as a whole can be interpreted to a much higher concentration, so you really get your point across… I feel like there’s too much music, and too much everything, that isn’t sincere… It’s like people are just doing really decorative stuff, just for the sake of putting something out there.
Jonathan: It feels like over the last ten years or so music has sort of fallen into this direction that I think is really sad where all the emphasis is on getting a big producer or getting so-and-so featured on the track and having a weird remix. I feel like people forgot about the song. You’ve got to write songs. People forgot to just cut the fat away and write a song from the heart, as cheesy as that sounds. It’s important to us to write something sincere, vulnerable and blatant, and just wear it on our sleeves… There’s something so sweet and so powerful about being genuine, even if you come across as undignified or foolish. Our whole idea was to not be gimmicky. We’ve literally said that we want to be is boring and uninteresting because I think you just have to get rid of all that other stuff - anything that distracts from this thing which I think the whole world is craving - just a beautiful song.
So does it bother you to get grouped with other bands in this so-called ‘surf pop revival’?
Connor: Yeah but it’s stupid that people do that.
Do you think there is a surf-pop revival?
Connor: Sure, but that’s never been the thing with us. People jumped on this ‘Let’s go surfing’ thing when we’ve said it a million times, we don’t surf, we don’t talk about us surfing. There’s that one song that has the word surfing in it. We don’t listen to The Beach Boys, we don’t like The Beach Boys. I don’t even like the beach.
Jonathan: To us it’s a lazy comparison, because we have that one song with the word surfing in it. It was our first single though so I would never be pissed that somebody’s asked the question.
Connor: It’s not the question that bothers me it’s the proclamation. When people are like ‘this is fun-loving fifties surf-pop’. It’s like where the fuck does Brian Wilson come into play here?
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