Sardonic, abrasive and frequently sounding completely unlike anything the band have released before, The Drones’ seventh album Feelin Kinda Free finds the band at their most gleefully strange. Particularly thrilling is how much of the band’s post-Crazy Horse guitar rock influences have been chucked out the window, instead evoking everything from Battles to the dentist’s drill.

“In a lot of ways we were just sick to death of rock guitar,” guitarist Dan Luscombe dryly explains to ripitup.com.au. “Gaz and I, we’ve taken on so many different influences and we love so much different genres and players, – I’d say about a tenth of them are ‘rock’ musicians. So it’s sort of funny that we always end up playing big, distorted open chords, and we have been for years.

“We both basically made a pretty determined and conscious effort to make the guitars sound like some other unnameable instrument where possible,” he says.

The experimental nature of the album can be partly chalked up to its creation. Eschewing the usual model of buggering off to Tasmanian mill or a shack in the mountains, the band bunkered down with producer Aaron Cupples in their own studio and pushed themselves to new – and ever weirder – extremes. “We wanted to make a record that we spent considerable time on,” he says. “In the past it’s been a case of rehearse, rehearse then go in and record essentially live. It’s generally taken no longer than 10 days, the mix about the same, and then it’s a record.

“But this one we thought ‘let’s take a considerable amount of time because we have time’. We also have our own studio now in Fitzroy, so we had a bit of a clubhouse situation where we were just going in three days a week for about five months,” he explains. “The result was definitely much more considered, almost pored over. We got to examine every little corner of everything, and tweak it and mess with it.”

As Liddiard explained to ripitup.com.au last year, the return of drummer Christian Strybosch afforded the band an opportunity to embrace rhythm, building each song from the ground up with live drum takes twisted, processedand looped by Cupples. Then the real fun started as Liddiard cut an almost Kanye-like figure from the other side of the glass.

“With this one it was really just Gareth in the control room while I was playing a part and him saying ‘nup weirder, something weirder!’ or vice versa. Really just egging each other on.”

From the first notes of lead single Taman Shud, the name-taking, Andrew Bolt-slagging middle finger to modern life, it was clear the band had succeeded. Sure, Liddiard’s lyrics have frequently taken a scalpel to Australia’s history cultural identity and cultural identity, but no lengthy songs about convicts have ever been quite as blunt as “You came here in a boat you fucking c***”.

“We were pissing ourselves,” Luscombe says of the track’s creation. “There are a couple of lines there where Gareth was like ‘okay I’m out of insults, everyone else come up with some’.

But for all the darkness there are moments of light, albeit kind of depressing light. To Think That I Once Loved You features choral harmonies from Melbourne band Harmony, a presence which marks one of the rare occasions for guests outside the band to appear prominently on a Drones record.

“I think you might be right,” he says. “I hadn’t thought about that… backing singers were hard to come by in the tundra. They’re our buddies, we toured with them before. The initial demo when it was made had layers of Gareth’s voice doing the harmonies, and it just seemed like we should sweeten it up.”

For a second we profess to being unsure of how Liddiard’s distinctive drawl would work in a stacked, Brian Wilson-like harmonic arrangement. “It was quite good actually… when this album becomes as big as any Kanye West release – which I’m sure it will – we’ll put that demo in the box set.”

Now all that’s left for the band is to tackle the novel task of learning how to actually play a record that’s already in the can live.

“It’s fuckin’ hard!” Luscombe says. “But we’re getting there.”

Feelin Kinda Free is out Friday, March 18

THE DRONES FEELIN KINDA FREE TOUR

Friday, April 29 – The Gov, Adelaide
Saturday, April 30 – Rosemount Hotel, Perth
Friday, May 6 – The Triffid, Brisbane
Saturday, May 7 – The Northern, Byron Bay
Thursday, May 12 – Wollongong Uni Bar, Wollongong
Friday, May 13 – The Cambridge, Newcastle
Saturday, May 14 – The Metro, Sydney
Friday, May 20 – 170 Russell, Melbourne

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