BRAG columnist Joseph Earp takes a short trip through the history of The Drones, one of Australia’s best loved and most important bands.

Things aren’t looking good.

Not for Australians, nor humanity as a whole. It’s only a matter of time before we pass a significant, terrifying milestone: soon we will be adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere at a rate beyond repair, triggering a climate change emergency.

Gareth Liddiard knows what’s up. He’s spent a career talking about the apocalypse. “The icecaps are getting skinny, still [people] are not concerned / They’re very near extinct,” he once brightly chirped on ‘Oh My’, a stunning shard of ebony at the centre of The Drones’ 2008 recordHavilah.

Science is already proving Liddiard to be less of a nihilist and more of a realist. In many ways, his philosophies align with those of sci-fi author and poet Margaret Atwood, a thinker who has argued that any significant climate change disaster would “result [in] the disappearance of the word ‘we’. The word ‘I’ would replace it, as the war of all against all sets in.”

And yet if things are so bad, why does The Drones’ frontman sound so bloody cheerful about it? If he’s so convinced we’re all doomed, why is he still making music? And why the fuck won’t he stop laughing?

The answer to such questions can be found by tracing a short line through The Drones’ discography. You don’t even need to look from beginning to end, though you should, ’cause it’s the bloody Drones. But to form a picture of the way the band has adjusted its perspective on this blood-and-bile-drenched onslaught we call life, you only need to take a close look at three albums.

Might as well do that now. After all, it’s not like we’re playing the long game anymore. A bit of wasted time doesn’t mean anything to the doomed.

Wait Long By The River and the failure of the individual

The Drones’ 2005 second album,Wait Long By The RiverAnd The Bodies Of Your Enemies Will Float By,is a painful record. It’s a visceral account of struggle; less a poetic demonstration of agony and more a crumpled, bloodied fist banging into the pavement over and over again. It’s not really meant to be clever or considered – it’s meant to rage itself ragged, and ‘This Time’ is not so much an album closer as an album destructor.

By its very nature, it’s also an insular album. Liddiard doesn’t look to outside sources to blame. ‘Sitting On The Edge Of The Bed Cryin’’ is a self-depreciating pummel, the auditory equivalent of the scene in Fight Club where the unnamed narrator beats himself bloody across his boss’ office. Liddiard is laughing at himself rather than with himself, and there’s a cruel sense of unguarded mirth throughout the record.

Indeed, humour is one of the greatest keys to The Drones’ sound – as dark as their music gets, the doom always comes accompanied with a snicker. After all, the joke is always on us, isn’t it? Or, in the case ofWait Long, on Liddiard.

Even the seemingly outward reaching ‘You Really Don’t Care’ leaves the titular ‘you’ vague and ill-defined. The flaws contained within are Liddiard’s flaws. “It ain’t easy not being a fake,” he mutters, but it doesn’t sound like a statement of strength. It sounds like someone listing the reasons why they’ve finally given up. As does the whole album, in fact. Liddiard barely takes a breath, and when he does, it’s only brief – a tiny serving of respite before he resumes the hard work of taking himself apart.

The Miller’s Daughterand the failure of love

The Miller’s Daughter, released as an immediate follow-up toWait Long By The River,is a very different kind of beast entirely. After all, this is an album that contains a song titled ‘She Had An Abortion She Made Me Pay For’. It’s as searing and unashamed a track as Liddiard has ever written; an ugly, trembling dose of fear. But the source of the band’s rage isn’t self-directed anymore. The enemies of The Drones have made themselves known. And they’re friends. They’re lovers.

Liddiard doesn’t entirely absolve himself of responsibility, but on The Miller’s Daughterhis sights are set on the destruction of timeless systems – systems greater than himself. It’s not just people who he sees as flawed. It’s their very means of communication: the things that go on in their hearts. With each album he directs his disappointment further up the chain, and the bullseyeThe Miller’s Daughter squints and fires away at is painted upon Cupid’s bare backside.

The aim is utter destruction. The ever-present humour is constantly dark. Hatred hardens, becomes impenetrable. There’s no pity in The Miller’s Daughter. Gone are the lengthy, blues-indebted instrumentals to be found on Wait Long. They have beenreplaced by startlingly simple walls of sound. It’s Phil Spector on acid. It’s music as a violent act, as a transgression, and every second of it hurts.

Feelin’ Kinda Freeand the failure of the world

If The Miller’s Daughter is a kind of ultimate destruction, then everything The Drones have released after that record has been a kind of beautiful ruin. Their most recent albumFeelin’ Kinda Free is a chronicle of the kind of universal horror that comes after annihilation – the sound of a band saying what you say when you have nothing left to say.

It’s only a political record insofar as it examines the human traits that fuel politics: traits like boredom and loneliness and greed. But it’s not as angry asThe Miller’s Daughter. It’s not as bitter asWait Long. In fact, the record is filled with an odd, hard-to-pinpoint peace. It’s not defined by complacency. It’s not the sound of a band giving up. But it is the sound of a band aware that cruelty is the common denominator – that our evils bind us.

On the title track in particular, horror becomes equated with the sublime. Though there is a kind of sneering irony to the chorus, it also works when taken on face value. “I’m feelin’ kinda free / I’m going straight to DVD,Liddiard sings, his words airy and light.The doomed live as though they have been cut loose from repercussions, after all. They act with abandon – with the distinct exuberance of the free.

Similarly, ‘Boredom’, a track that tackles the double-headed evil of extremism and numbness, comes with no judgement. Liddiard doesn’t sing the line about “flipping burger[s] for the infidels”with a sneer. Through his fear and his shock and his awe he has found himself writing from the perspective of a young man contemplating becoming a terrorist simply because it beats being so fuckingbored. Of course. Liddiard doesn’t depict extremism as a refuge or anything resembling the right answer, but he understands.Pain has bound him to the world. Agony has brought him a weird, terrible peace. Not complacency.Peace.

That’s whyFeelin’ Kinda Free sounds so self-assured – why it sounds so calm. It’s a kind of black-as-bile meditation, a howl of grief made by the whole world at once. In that way, it’s almost spiritual. It’s about the unity that a lack of unity can bring, and simultaneously both Liddiard’s most pessimistic and optimistic album.

That’s why Liddiard is still making music – that’s why he sounds so chirpy. He’s taking refuge. Sure, it’s a madman’s refuge. But that’s exactly why he’s laughing.

The Drones play the Metro Theatre on Saturday May 14. Tickets are still available from the Metro website, here.

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