The Drums Hit the Ground Running

The outstandingly uplifting, sunny-surfer meets New-Wave sound of The Drums brings us back to the good old days of popular music, celebrating a simpler time, when songs were stripped down and dazzling. Live, The Drums are four boys and two girls – a group of friends at the drive-in, around the jukebox, at a party on the beach – everyone simply enjoying themselves, dancing and bopping to the merry beat. The guys pluck electric guitar notes and pound on the drums, and the gals sing backup, donning matching dresses. Theatrical and cheerfully dramatic, The Drums plow through songs “inspired by surfing and Barack Obama,” flavored with plain-spoken, love-inspired lyrics. Lead singer Jonathan Pierce is largely responsible for the band’s potent entertainment factor. While delivering powerhouse vocals, equal parts Joy Division and Broadway, Pierce moves buoyantly about the stage and communicates with the crowd through animated glances and gestures, inviting everyone in the room to join in on the fun.

In May, The Drums received a last minute invitation to perform at the NYC Popfest. Because, up until the day of the show, the members had not practiced together as a band, they debated canceling the gig. Wisely, they decided to play anyway. Influential NYC music blog Brooklyn Vegan called this, the first-ever performance by The Drums, “arguably the highlight of the final day of NYC Popfest,” starting off the career of the newly formed band with a bang. Since then, the group has played a considerable number of live shows, winning them countless positive reviews.

If anyone at The Bell House on June 23 had been having a bad day, come evening their blues had been drowned by the radiant sound of The Drums. After the show, I spoke with the band’s creative minds – long time friends Jonathan Pierce and Jacob Graham – about exploding goats, love songs, and The Shangri-Las.

JezebelMusic.com: You guys sounded really great. And you just played your first show in May?

Jacob Graham: Yeah, for the Popfest at the Cake Shop.

JM.com: Which got really good reviews.

Jonathan Pierce: Yeah it was kind of crazy.

JG: That was actually the first day all of us had rehearsed together in the same room.

JP: A few hours before the show.

JM.com: So before The Drums you were in bands individually?

JP: We have The Drums together and Jacob has his own thing.

JG: I have another band called Horse Shoes. It’s me and another guy. It’s not quite as active as The Drums… Horse Shoes has a record coming out in about a month or two on Shelflife records, and we played in Sweden about a month ago.

JM.com: So I understand that you two met as kids, and then had a falling out?

JG: We met at a summer camp, actually a church camp. All the boys were sleeping in the gym. He’s from New York and I’m from Ohio, so we were at the different sides of the gym, and I heard this really obscure band which was my favorite band at the time. He was playing it.

JM.com: Which band was it?

JG: We don’t really have to get into that. [laughs]

JP: We’re kind of embarrassed about it.

JG: This band that everyone else in the world hated, and were the only two people in the world that liked the band, and I walked over and was like, “Who’s playing this band?” And he’s like “I am,” and I said, “Well then you’re my best friend.” And he’s like, “You’re my best friend.” I was 11 and he was 12 or 13. He gave me his address and his home phone number and we just kept in contact for years and years.

JP: We were both weird boys who no one understood so we kind of had to write to each other. And our parents wouldn’t let us talk on the phone because that was expensive.

JG: We were into electronic music and all the analog synthesizers but we were probably the last people in the country to get the Internet, so that’s all we could do. We just kept in contact, and we were about 18 when we started a band together called Goat Explosion, and did a tour all over the country for a month or two.

JM.com: So that was when you first started playing together?

JG: Yeah that’s kind of when we started and then at the end of that tour we decided we didn’t like each other. [laughter]

JP: We went years without talking.

JG: I think it was because we had met when we were so young, and up until we were 18 we’d write letters and visit each other on weekends and stuff but we didn’t live in the same town and then we were on this tour for two months and we couldn’t leave each other’s side.

JM.com: Were there other members in the band?

JP: It was like an electronic duo basically.

JG: At the end of the tour I think we were just so sick of each other that we just kind of stopped talking for a few years. And then in that time he [Pierce] had a band called Elkland that did pretty well. They went on tour with Erasure. And then when that ended I called him and said “Hey, you’re not doing anything, I’m not doing anything, why don’t we start Goat Explosion again?” which we tried to do kind of unsuccessfully for maybe two months.

JP: We recorded a five song EP, but we never released it.

JG: But because of that we kind of became friends again… Five years after that happened we decided to really try to…

JP: Can you stop aging us, please? [laughter] And 16 years after that we started a new band.

JG: When I say we started when we were 18, I meant eight.

JP: Three decades later… [laughter]

JM.com: So five years after that, The Drums?

JG: He [Pierce] was still in New York, and I had moved to Florida at that point.

JM.com: Because the surfing is awesome?

JP: We love the beach, and you know, babes at the beach. We love that whole culture, we’re very drawn to it. We weren’t always. Jacob used to run around with gothic clothes and capes.

JG: Oh God, that’s all we have to say about that. [laughter]

JM.com: So then you [Pierce] moved down to Florida?

JP: Yeah, I was kind of doing a lot of nothing here.

JG: So we started recording a record. We had been playing synthesizers for so long we just kind of decided right then that we were sick of synthesizers, and so the record is mostly guitar. But neither of us could play the guitar, so I don’t think there are any chords on any of our records because neither of us can play chords, so it’s all kind of New Order sounding leads on top of leads. And after the record was finished we were kind of like, “Oh dang, well neither of us can play the guitar” [laughs] and he was like “Well I have to sing so you have to learn how to play the guitar.” Our first show at the Cake Shop was the first time I’d ever played the guitar in front of people.

JM.com: Well it comes across great. You don’t need to be some proficient like Eddie Van Halen.

JP: A lot of professionally, or traditionally trained musicians, I rarely ever hear a song that really hits me because of the mathematics of the whole thing. And a song where it’s just a hand clap and someone whistling or someone trying to play guitar is so much more beautiful and touching because it’s so sincere, whereas someone who sits down and has the chord changes all planned out and “this should transpose to this”… I mean, some of that music is beautiful, but what we’re really drawn to is sort of incompleteness.

JG: I think what it really boils down to is that we think that really simple melodies are the best melodies. If they’re really intricate or there are so many notes in there, it starts to sound kind of jazzy and not really like a concrete melody, and usually people that are really talented throw in so much extra stuff that can sometimes kind of detract from that perfect, simple melody.

JP: We kind of cut the fat away. And also simple lyric, which is sort of the essence of pop music. It’s just simple melody, simple lyrics. And we have no problem writing a song where everyone can relate to it and enjoy it. And when you have a perfect lyric and a perfect melody together, when that happens, it’s the most magical thing.

JM.com: I like your lyrics. A lot of love songs. I don’t know if you want to use that term?

JP: I have no problem using that term.

JG: Well that’s the main thing to write songs about. I mean, if you’re not writing songs about love, it’s lame, but what else are you going to write a song about?

JP: You can write a song about playing checkers. [laughter]

JG: But the basic need to love is really the only thing that everyone can relate to.

JP: We’re all about tried and true. And that sort of pop music has its own recipe.

JM.com: Your style is reminiscent of some 50s and 80s elements? Does that align with what you’re saying about tried and true?

JG: The 80s elements are just because we’ve always been so into electronic music.

JP: We’re collectors of analog synths.

JG: Yeah, I think we both got our first Kraftwerk record when we were ten or something, but when we started the band we thought we need to really…

[Person walking by: “You guys were really good!”]
[JG: Oh, thank you.]
[JP: Thank you so much.]

JG: …we really need to infuse it with that 50s sound because that is, in our opinion, kind of the birth of pop music, when it really started. So we thought let’s just really cut to the chase, get back to the basics.

JM.com: Want to talk about some of your other influences?

JP: Really what spawned The Drums was this band on Factory Records, they were also on Sara Records, called The Wake. We were like, “Let’s start a band called The Drums,” and then we tried to figure out what direction we wanted to go in, and then Jacob showed me this song by The Wake called “Pale Spectre,” and I think I’ve mentioned it in every interview we’ve done, but it’s how the band started. It wasn’t like we started jamming and found a groove. It was like “Let’s rip that song off completely, 100%” and it’s impossible to do, we’ve realized now, because it’s so brilliant.

JG: Every song we record, it’s almost like “Maybe we could do the drums like that Wake song that we love, or maybe we could do the synth part like that Wake song we love.”

JP: They just had no problem being pretty and wonderful. So that was really where we found the sound we wanted. And then I took a trip to Baltimore to visit a friend and he played this song by The Shangri-Las called “Give Him a Great Big Kiss,” and something in me was just kind of like “This is the perfect song”… And also kind of the whole, this sounds really stupid and cheesy, the whole political climate right now…

JG: We though it would be good for something more uplifting.

JP: We’ve always wished Joy Division did a dance record. Like a beach party record. How cool would that be?

JG: Yeah, if they did this really weird switch and decided to do something pretty. We love Joy Division but what if they had tried to write really pretty songs?

JP: So I came back from Baltimore and was just like, “Jake: The Shangri-Las,” and we just got on YouTube and watched all their videos. We just got obsessed, reading their entire Wikipedia page, and then searching all the members. Two of them are dead, two of them are still alive. The lead singer, Mary Weiss, is living in New York. I think she’s selling furniture. A really tragic story.

JG: We should probably go visit her and thank her.

JP: We thought about having her singing on a track.

JM.com: So The Drums have a record coming out?

JP: August 4th we have an EP coming out on Twentyseven Records, and we’re also talking to other labels around the world about releasing it as well. We’re just shopping around. And we’re finishing up touches on our full length right now. The EP is called Summertime!

JG: A little late but [laughs]… we had hoped it would come out a little earlier.

JP: We should have called it Reflections of Summer.

JG: That’s actually really pretty. Or The Last Day of Summer. [laughter]

JP: In the meantime we’re playing shows. We’re doing some New England dates. We’re talking to agents about setting up tours and stuff. A lot of things are in the works.

JM.com: Is there anything else you want to say about your music?

JP: I think for so long people have thought that what their grandparents are into just can’t be cool, but it’s always been cool to us.

JG: We’re just ready for something kind of uplifting, without being crazy. And there’s no point in flooding the market with what’s already there. We just thought, “What’s the point of adding to what’s going on? We should do something a little different.” And sometimes I think we have a clear vision with what we want to do with the band, but we don’t know where it’s going really, so that’s exciting for us. We didn’t expect so many people to be so supportive this soon, so it’s really big. It’s made everything fun the whole way.

by Dan D’Ippolito