The Drums

I love the composite sketches of songs that stay with me after a radio show. When my mind runs the "Boy girl revolutionaries... YOU AND ME!" segment from "Her Jazz" over and over on a loop until it suddenly somewhat (but somewhat not) inexplicably fades into the chorus of the Magic Bullets song "The Upstairs Flight," and then the whistled intro to the Drums "Let's Go Surfing."

Oh the Drums.

I saw them play at NYC Popfest. I didn't have the best view as Cake Shop is not configured to offer the best view to those not immediately in front. The sound was quite good though, and from what I heard I knew that the Drums were something special. It's just that... they played late Sunday afternoon. I'm fairly certain it was before I went to find my first meal of the day, and I'm also fairly certain that I was still anxiously wondering whether or not someone that I used to know a lot better than I do now was going to walk through the door at any minute. I did not give the Drums the level of my attention that they deserved. This sub par level of attention was in fact so severe that despite several friends referring to them as a highlight over the next few days, somewhere in the ensuing haze that took over my memories of both New York and San Francisco Popfests the Drums were lost completely. It wasn't until checking my Radio Free Silver Lake email account last week that they were rightfully pushed into the front of my mind. There were plenty of quotes in this email from various blogs citing them as a major Popfest highlight of course, and the memories started flooding back. However, it was a different quote in the email, this one from the band itself that really grabbed my attention:

"We just wanted to start a band that sounded like The Wake." say The Drums, "We heard their song 'Pale Spectre' and went crazy! Maybe our music didn't turn out sounding too much like The Wake but we're really just like everybody else, chasing that perfect pop song. And that's not so bad right?"

I think I stopped just short of smacking myself on the forehead with the palm of my hand like people do in sitcoms. Brian told me about this band a few Hungry Beat!'s ago, only he thought that the Wake song they were inspired by was "Crush the Flowers." I do remember really wanting to hear any band that formed because they wanted to sound like the Wake. Their influence is definitely apparent, but that influence does somehow filter out into a sound that sounds rather current and exciting. They are releasing their Summertime E.P. on September 15th through the New York based Twenty Seven Records label, but you can pre-order it from Insound. Insound says the release date is August 4th so I suppose that if it shows up sometime that week, it's just an added bonus. Not too mention a whole extra month of the summer to enjoy an E.P. with the title of Summertime.