You Have To Hear: The Drums

You can kind of feel for The Drums. Before they had even released an EP, they were being hailed by many as the great saviours of indie pop. This is both one of the great strengths and weaknesses of the current climate of music blogging and magazines: we can learn about bands before they have had a chance to become comfortable with their own sound.

For those who haven’t heard about these guys before, they are an American band from New York with four members, and up until a few weeks ago they had only released single songs and a sort of compilation EP. This didn’t stop them from gaining a huge amount of attention, however. Their single ‘Let’s Go Surfing’ seemed to be everywhere for a while, and NME proclaimed that these guys are a band “everyone can fall in love with”.

Personally, I don’t believe you can really love a band until they’ve at least released a proper EP.

Which was why I was very excited for the release of The Drums’ ‘Summertime! EP’ a few weeks ago. But as someone who has been following these guys for a while, there really isn’t much new stuff there for me. This EP can almost be seen as a token consolidation EP: the record to solidify, justify, and cash-in on the hype.

But anyway, The Drums specialise in a fusion of 80s surf pop and synth music. And it’s hard to deny that it works pretty well. They are a summer band, so depending on where you live, you may be discovering this band a few months too late. It’s the kind of music that would be very hard to listen to in winter, just because it would remind you of what you’re missing.

So what we have is one of the most hyped new bands in the world. And while it’s easy to be skeptical, it’s not without reason that these guys are getting all this attention. Their music at time borders on irresistible. They don’t have any great message to send, their lyrics are encapsulated in the chorus of ‘Let’s Go Surfing’: “Oh momma, I wanna go surfin'”. But that is some of the appeal of this band- they know what they are, and they don’t try to be anything more. They just want to have fun, and they want you to have fun as well.

Alternatively, just when you’re thinking this, they might throw something like “This ain’t what I thought it would be, this is the saddest summer ever” (‘Saddest Summer’) at you, just to confuse you a bit. But all-in-all, this is still a happy, hooky indie pop band that you really can fall in love with.

Even if I wouldn’t recommend doing so just quite yet.

Listen if you like: Girls, Friendly Fires, summer, the beach, surfing

Artist: The Drums

Song: Let’s Go Surfing