Picture by Tony Mott

Another kind of blues

Melbourne four piece The Drones hit Hoxton hotspot Cargo behind latest album Havilah. Nic Howden was there.

Intrinsically Australian they might be, but to trot out glib countrymen comparisons, Birthday Party, The Triffids etc. etc. as comfort blanket critics are want to, misses the point. The Drones’ irregular, blues-soaked song structure, founder/frontman Gareth Liddiard’s riffs, slashed out around knee high, and his soul wrenching, Kerouac-esque stream of consciousness, are closer to London’s own Gallon Drunk holding Neil Young and James Williamson in vicious post pub armlocks.

The songs are drawn out, just 10 in 90 or so minutes, but there’s no trace of any indulgent fat, from opener Jezabel and Nail It Down via Sharkfin Blues, recently voted Greatest Australian Song Ever, to the tumultuous bass-led encore, Miller’s Daughter. ‘Tall as a gallows/gallowesque, dress the same colour as your last sunset’, it stays with me throughout the journey home. The Drones cleanse minds better than any Zen Buddhist, before filling them their own visceral edge.

At the Luminaire in May, they were good. But at Cargo, with its outstanding acoustics and bigger, more visible stage, they are phenomenal. Nine years/five albums old, the band is breaking even, unshakeably focused, with a live passion that puts a pox on pretenders like the White Stripes.

“You’d have to be really into it to appreciate our music,” Liddiard has said. But I defy anyone to see The Drones live and not find a riot going on among hairs on the back of the neck they never knew existed.

Set list:

• Jezabel
• Nail It Down
• The Minotaur
• Freedom In The Loot
• Sitting On The Edge Of My Bed
• Sharkfin Blues
• Six Ways
• Abortion
• Never Going To Change
• Miller’s Daughter

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