By Kevin Donnellan
Photos by Alessio Michelini
It’s Wednesday afternoon, and Connor Hanwick and Jacob Graham of The Drums are sitting down for a smoke and a chat. The have just come through a nightmare of a journey from the Phantom FM studios to get back to The Academy for a sound check. Their taxi driver had cheerfully informed Connor that the airport will probably be closed the following day. For a band from New York this all feels a little strange. “Buses are overturning because of an inch of snow,” Connor laughs. He immediately expresses his hope that no buses actually do overturn. In the space of a sentence you have a view of this band in microcosm; a mix of humour, cynicism, sincerity and thoughtfulness. The look and attitude of a British indie band teamed with that endearing politeness that Americans rarely get credit for.
They are back in Ireland for the third time in under 12 months following supports shows with Florence.. and a Oxegen appearance. It would be fair to expect a degree of jadedness at this point. But they are fairly stoic about it all. “When you start to think about it you get a little wrecked but we just keep our heads down.” explains drummer Connor. “And it’s nice to be coming back to places we’ve been before.”
The tour hasn’t been without its casualties however, September saw Adam Kessler leave the band abruptly. I assume the two lads won’t want to talk about Kessler’s departure, I assume wrong. “The past year was almost like him pulling away anyway and towards the end it felt like every single thing that came up when there was a creative or business decision the three of us [Connor, Jacob and singer Johnny] were on a completely different page than him,” says guitarist Jacob, choosing his words carefully. “So it was almost like every decision ended up being a struggle, we had this obstacle, because his mind was completely somewhere else.”
Connor nods his head in agreement before adding “I’m not sure that Adam really contributed a ton creatively [to the album] so to not have that thing that makes it [touring] worthwhile, why would you put up with that lifestyle for the sake of something that you don’t believe in?”
They say this without a hint of anger, they use the language of someone recently out of a bad relationship; relieved, happy, looking forward. They haven’t spoken to Adam since he left. “Well it’s just really hard to keep in touch with your close friends and family when you’re on tour,” says Connor. “So to try to keep in touch with somebody who desperately wants to get away…”
Anyway, away from the past and onto the future, what’s the plan once this tour finishes? “We’ll be off for Christmas but kind of as soon as we get off of this we’re going to start our second record, it’ll be a bit more of a routine,” says Jacob. It’s early days in their career but do they have a set process? “Usually Johnny locks himself in a room for a while and fleshed out the skeleton of the song, then we’ll all sort of throw ideas at it.”
They have spoken about keeping things simple and have voiced disdain for overly produced music in past interviews. This comes across load and clear again here. Every sound on our record has a place there , we’re not trying to make anything more complicated than it is.” says Connor.
“There are certain bands and their first record sounds like their last record and you know you can always go to that band for that sound and just grab any record, and that’s really interesting.” adds Jacob.
It’s a different attitude from many bands who speak about growth and experimenting. In fact they seem to be giving their critics a ready made stick to beat them with come the next album. But they also have a point. Yes it’s nice listening to different Radiohead albums and the progress they make. But it’d be nice to have a few more bands where you can shuffle their five albums and spend four hours in their universe without some jarring changes of pace. Even thinking about it now I can’t come up with a (good) band who’s last record sounds like their first.
There is an intensity to a lot of the answers they give, a bog standard inquiry about current bands they like is tossed around for five minutes before the lads agree that they don’t want to commit to any current band just yet. “It’s almost sort of a hesitation to talk about a certain band because… if their next record comes out and you hate it, you have all these interviews attaching yourself to that band.” says Jacob. A straightforward Q&A with these guys would be difficult.
Not that they are difficult, just that they are very serious about what they do. The lightness of their songs (in sound, if not content) belies a band who are planning for a career as opposed to a couple of years of fun. Good luck to them.
