The Drums Reach Into The Past For Their Present Approach

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 27, 2012 4:20PM

The Drums are rather skilled at taking skeletal but catchy tunes that get you to sing along happily with until you realize just what it is you're singing. On their sophomore effort, Portamento, they mine, almost obsessively, the territory of unrequited or doomed love. The tone is that of a teenager's bedroom, cloaked in darkness with peeling tape holding together the makeshift wallpaper of a hundred band posters. There are please ringing throughout that since death is final you should love me tonight, or of lovers bound together by the knowledge that apart they wouldn't have a clue as to what to do, and that's not a good thing.

Through it all The Drums back this with minimal music. Sharp, plinking guitar lines poke around the edges of a throbbing bass that attempts to melt beyond its borders only to run into the sharp rails of insistent, relentless drum patterns. The songs all have shiny cold exteriors, but you want to consume them nonetheless because inside this flinty candy is familiar emotion. The wants and needs that throb throughout the lyrics are not the words of a grown-up, but it is at the emotional core that runs throughout most and finds its roots in desperate adolescence.

The band plays this Sunday, April 29, at Subterranean. We just learned it's sold out, but if you can somehow score a ticket we urge you to do so. We've found ourselves with a pair of tickets to give away to the sold-out show, so enter below before 5 p.m. CST for your chance to win!

Check out their video for "Days" off Portamento and we think you might find yourself just as inexorably drawn to the band's simple heartache as we are.