HOT ALBUM
ROCK&ROLL
26 | Rolling Stone | RollingStoneAus.com May, 2016
T
he drones find themselves in
an enviable situation. Nineteen years
and seven albums into their career,
they’vebeenabletowritetheirownrule
book free from the expectations of labels
andfansalike.Eachrecordbytheonce
Perth-basedgrouphasbeenreleasedto
rapturouscriticalacclaim,butthey’ve
neverrackedupthesortofsalesthatwould
have propelled them out of the under-
groundthathasembracedthemsowarm-
ly. Album seven, last month’sFeelin Kinda
Free,isunlikelytochanget
trajectory,seeingasthoug
it’sawilddeparturefrom
their earlier guitar-based
records, careening off
into jazzy experimenta-
tion,electronicgrooves
and trip-hop-tinged dub.
Although by that de-
scription it sounds like
we’ve downloaded the wron
preview tracks, bassist and v
ist Fiona Kitschin explains that after the
success of their last album, 2013’sISee Sea-
weed, it was a necessary shift in aesthetics.
“I think on I See Seaweed we reached the
pinnacle of our sound up until then. I think
it was, ‘Right, we’ve done that.’ Even when
we were recording Seaweed Gaz [frontman
Gareth Liddiard] was saying, ‘I wanna do
some weird shit on this record’, but it just
didn’t really turn out that way. It turned
out like a classic Drones record. After that
it was like, we don’t just want to do that for
the rest of our lives. Let’s move on and dosomething more creative,
keep ourselves interested
well.”
lin Kinda Free sees Liddi-
ard taking a more fluid approach to song-
writing. “Gaz was like, ‘No fucking blues
guitar on this album’,” laughs Kitschin.
“And no traditional guitar solos. A lot of
the music isn’t really guitar band stuf .”
Recorded at the excellently-named
Tropical Fuck Storm Studios in Mel-
bourne, the album wasn’t a simple depar-
ture for the Drones. “It took a while to re-
cord. It was probably recorded over a six
month period. It was a dif erent way of re-
cording for us so it was a bit of trial and
error in how to go about it. We obvious-ly know how to make a [regular] Drones
record. That’s easy, we do our bit and it’ll
come out sounding like us, but this took a
while to fi gure out how to record and write
the songs.”
Kitschin also had the added challenge of
singing more on the album, a development
that she plays down. “I guess ‘Shut Down
SETI’ is almost a duet with me screech-
ing quite laughably. No, but I really en-
joyed singing.” There are other female vo-
cals throughout the LP, some courtesy of
members of fellow Melbourne indie stal-
warts Harmony. Is Liddiard writing him-
self out of the lead singer role?
“Most of the songs Gaz writes these days
have backing vocals and the combina-
tion of his voice and the girl voice tends to
sound pretty good. I’m probably the wrong
person to ask, maybe Gaz has some devi-
ous plan.” MATT COYTEThe Drones Set a New Flight Path
How the trail-blazing indie
darlings pressed hard-reset
on their sound for album
number sevenRISINGAccording to Epitaph Records,
California punks Plague Vendor
have matured and mellowed
since they released their debut
LP, Free To Eat, in 2014. Nothing
could be further from the truth.“Epitaph might just be saying
that because I don’t take of my
shirt as much at shows these
days,” says frontman Brandon
Blaine. “The truth is that we’re
still very rebellious. We perform
every show like it’s our last.”
That attitude comes to the
fore on the band’s new LP,
Bloodsweat, which was recorded
in a matter of days. “Our aim forthe recording was just to get in
and get out,” says Blaine. “We
didn’t overthink the process.”
Blaine concedes that some
of the new sounds on the LP- including organ and piano –
could be labelled ‘mature’. But
their punk attitude remains.
“It’s not like we went into the
studio and started playing
djembes.” DAN F. STAPLETON
PLAGUE VENDOR BARE ALL ON NEW LP
Cali punks deny
mellowing out on
anticipated second LPtheir
hng
vocal-k
asw
FeelCHANGE IS GOOD
Fiona Kitschin on bass
duties and (left) vocals.