Global Musician
ASSIGNMENT 2
JOE WALKER
Research the work of one local Melbourne based music practitioner or one local Melbourne based music ensemble. Describe the music that they perform. Identify the musical culture that they identify with. Identify what music Industry model they have adopted in pursuing their musical practice.
Post as a multimedia blog and submit as a 2000 word written submission.
The Drones are one of Melbourne’s, and Australia’s, most beloved bands. Their unique musical style has elements of blues, garage, folk, and noise-rock at its core, with fleeting moments of doom and alt-country. The Drones’ studio releases have been received with universal critical acclaim, as have their live shows, which are renown for their almost relentless intensity and the visceral passion that front-man Gareth Liddiard exudes in both his singing and his guitar playing. After struggling with fitting into an established music culture in their inceptive stage in Perth, The Drones have since found their feet in Melbourne and have, in essence, carved their place into the Australian music landscape.
The origins of The Drones lie in Perth where Gareth Liddiard and then guitarist, Rui Pereira, were fed up with the music scene over there. The first incarnation of The Drones formed in 1998 and included a varied line up over the next few years. Liddiard described the Perth music scene “as really saccharine kinda pop thing, and we really didn’t fit in at all”[1]. The two found it extremely hard to get shows because their unique style of rock didn’t adhere to the expectations of the Perth music environment at the beginning of the decade. Liddiard and Pereira moved to Melbourne in 2001 where they were fascinated by a scene that was obviously more vibrant and which offered infinite opportunities to any band that was lucky enough to be a part of the Melbourne music scene. The Drones were welcomed with open arms in Melbourne. Liddiard and Pereira had recruited bass player Fiona Kitschin, and drummer, Christian Strybosch, and got into the studio as soon as they could to record their debut EP ‘Here Come The Lies’, which was released in 2002.
With a sound all that is completely their own, The Drones project an aural aggressiveness that is equally matched by Liddiard’s harsh-wailing and, at times, tender vocal styling. Their songs often stretch to over 8 minutes in length, which has been a main factor in why they are yet to gain mainstream popularity. Inspired by a multitude of artists and musical genre's like Suicide, Hank Williams, Townes van Zandt, Lightning Hopkins, Black Flag, Dirty Three, and Stravinsky, The Drones have evolved into something that at times sounds like Alt-Country, folk, dirge riddled blues, garage punk, and straight-ahead rock ‘n' roll[2]. Gareth Liddiard’s lyrics are a centerpiece of The Drones. They draw heavily from the Australian landscape, politics and life. Liddiard is a storyteller. This can be seen most in the song The Drones may be most well known for, “Shark Fin Blues”. The song tells of a shipwrecked sailor who stands on his sinking ship watching the sharks come “fin by fin… in the water like slicks of ink”. This song, which featured on their sophomore release “Wait long by the river and the bodies of your enemies will float by…” was voted by his contemporary musical peers as Australia’s greatest ever song in a recent poll conducted by Triple J[3]. Liddiard sings with a heavy Australian accent, which is accompanied by a voice that doesn’t have great range, but makes up for this in pure passion and rawness. The band is made up of two guitars, bass and drums. Both Dan Luscombe (current guitarist) and Fiona Kitschin feature on vocal harmonies. They regularly toy with a soft-loud dynamic that they have since become renown for.
On the surface, The Drones are essentially an alternative rock band. But delve deeper and you find a band whose music is layered with many intricacies. Liddiard’s beautiful, and at times, terrible lyrics speak of the harsh Australian landscape, and our country’s somewhat dark history. They match grit with beauty, and they counter mellowness with intensity all in the space of a 5-minute song. The song, “Sixteen Straws”, on their third album, The Gala Mill, draws on the tradition of Australian storytelling, taking the first verse from an old traditional song “Moreton Bay”, which told the story of a suicide pact amongst a group of convicts. One journalist had said of “Gala Mill”, that the great thing about the album was that it says, “This is who we are”[4].
Gareth Liddiard
The Drones recorded their two most recent albums in remote farmhouses in rural Australia. The Gala Mill (2006) was recorded on a farm in Tasmania, and the band’s most recent release was recorded in a small town in Victoria, which shares the same name as the title of the album, Havilah. This has resulted in the music being heavily influenced by the environment in which the albums were recorded. "Words From The Executioner to Alexander Pearce" from the Gala Mill (recorded in Tasmania), is based on the 19th century criminal, Alexander Pearce, who escaped prison in Tasmania on two occasions and resorted to killing the convicts he escaped with, turning to cannibalism to survive. Liddiard inhabits the executioner's mind for a discussion of guilt, empathy, experience, forgiveness, and jealousy. He asks the obvious, but at the same time, confronting question: "Tell me how do we taste?"[5].
This unique approach to their music has meant that they are yet to find mainstream success, but at the same time have garnered a huge cult following in Australia and around the world.
Their releases …
Wait Long by the River and the Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By - In-Fidelity/ATP Recordings (April, 2005)
The Miller's Daughter - Bang! Records (2005)
Gala Mill - ATP Recordings (September, 2006)
Havilah - ATP Recording
· have all been received with widespread critical acclaim by critics and fans the world over. This level of success is what Gareth Liddiard and band are content with. The Drones are a band that are antithesis of what is mainstream in Australian music today. This can be seen in Liddiard’s response to being nominated with a Triple J “J-Award”, Gareth exclaims how doesn’t class the nomination as what he sees as success:
“Yeah, they just had an awards thing and they nominated us for that. Wolfmother won that. They’re just another shit award system really…by the time we had any measure of success I would have been 27. I was, I wouldn’t say a fully grown man, but my ideas about success was pretty much set then, and that was just to play good music… we don’t have to ‘work’ now, we tour the world. We haven’t had jobs for a few years, and that for me is success.”
This outlook on life and music is what has facilitated their assimilation into Melbourne’s close-knit music community. They play regularly with a number of Melbourne’s most loved bands at some of Melbourne’s most iconic music venues. They have shared the stage with Rowland S Howard, The Saints, Hoss, Kim Salmon, Kes Band, Dan Kelly, The Twerps, Dan Brodie & The Broken Arrows, The Cosmic Psychos and The Stabs to name a few. They have also played with American Indie-sweethearts, Band of Horses, who struck an instant anchored with The Drones as both bands share many of the same musical attributes; they are now great friends.
The Drones won the coveted Australian Music Prize in 2006. The prize included grant $25,000 and also $25,000 for promotion. In true Gareth Liddiard style, he dismissed the importance of the award saying that “it’s based on the Mercury awards, but what are the English gonna think (about it), I mean we’re a colony, it’s not gonna affect their view of us. They’re not gonna go, “Oh you won The Australian Music Prize”. If anything they’ll just go “It must mean you suck even more than everybody else in Australia”[6].
The Drones have always played music for themselves. The bands’ current drummer, Mike Noga, stated in an interview in 2007 that “We have no grand plan when it comes to the music, we play exactly what we want with no regard for anyone else, we really don't care if you like it or hate it...we're doing it for ourselves, and I think that’s where all the best art is derived from... ”[7]. This mindset has led to the band taking a more traditional approach to operating as an entity in the music industry. The Drones rely on money from CD sales and their live shows to sustain themselves in the music industry. This money primarily goes toward getting the band overseas to play as many shows as they can to get enough money to get them into the studio and to continue their extensive tour schedule. The Drones are renown for extensive and exhausting touring since the early days of the band. In 2007, the band toured Europe and played 54 dates over 63 days. The Drones try and get their music to as many people as they can through live performance. They don’t invest much worth into having a large online presence in the form of a regularly updated Myspace, Facebook or Twitter pages. They rarely make video clips of their songs. Existing footage of the band is largely made up of poorly filmed amateur footage shot by fans from their many shows.
The Drones are often quite cynical about the state of the music industry. In 2008, Gareth Liddiard was quoted as saying that “Blogging has cut the balls off music criticism”[8]. This unfavourable opinion of the industry that The Drones are irrefutably a part of is a major reason as to why the band hasn’t found mainstream success. The Drones also have no real cohesive “image” or in a sense, marketable aesthetic that would appeal to the average mainstream consumer of music. Their songs often have no obvious hooks; the lyrics, which are often indecipherable, regularly speak of themes that are soaked in violence, are abstract and dark; and aurally, they are an extremely loud and intense rock band with unconventional song structures.
The Drones play music to make themselves happy, and by doing so they have gained a widespread following from true music lovers who value the integrity and rawness in their music. This approach is sure to bring longevity to the career of the band, and will ensure that the music of The Drones will continue to be loved by all those who take the time to listen to it.
[1] http://upfrontonline.net/the-drones/
[2] http://www.spookyrecords.com/Drones%20Press%20Info.html
[3] http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/drones-shark-fin-blues-tops-rock-list/2009/10/29/1256405474001.html
[4] http://upfrontonline.net/the-drones/
[5] http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/9613-gala-mill/
[6] http://upfrontonline.net/the-drones/
[7]http://www.thedwarf.com.au/nd/interviews/the_drones_leave_them_scratchin
[8] http://andrewmcmillen.com/2008/11/26/gareth-liddiard-on-music-writing/
"Why Write A Letter You'll Never Send" is one of the best songs I have heard in a long time. It's poetry.
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