The Fat Angel Sings

With The Drums’ new Abysmal Thoughts album, band founder Jonny Pierce is making the exact album he’s always held in his heart. Of course, this is The Drums, so that heart is broken—but there’s beauty and even bliss in this kind of heartbreak, as well as that special kind of glorious delirium that comes from taking everything life can throw at you and still walking away triumphant. If Abysmal Thoughts doesn’t sound at all abysmal—really, Pierce has rarely been this irresistibly pop—that’s because this is a story about how to figure out what happiness means once the worst has already happened. “Happiness can be confusing to me,” says Pierce. “It shows up out of nowhere, and before you can even get used to it, it’s vanished. But Abysmal Thoughts? I can rely on them—and with the political chaos that is raining down, who knows when these dark feelings will subside?”

As the last album cycle for the Drums finished and his long-term relationship with his former partner dissolved, Pierce took some time away from music altogether in hopes to reconnect with himself and find future inspiration. Determined to make a change, he ended up leaving his longtime home in New York and found himself isolated in a large empty apartment in Los Angeles, all his plans for life and love suddenly in shambles: “I said I wanted to let life happen?” he says. “Well, the universe listened and life began to fuck me real good! But honestly, I make the worst art when I’m comfortable. The stuff that resonates with me the longest—and that resonates with others—is always the stuff that comes out of my hardships and confusion.”

That hardship and confusion—and the clarity of personality and purpose it inspired—became Abysmal Thoughts, an unflinching autobiography with Pierce back in full control of the band. He’s back to not just writing all the songs by himself but playing every instrument, too, this time realizing exactly his own personal vision for the band. Not coincidentally, it’s some of the most revelatory work he’s ever done. The key was opener “Mirror,” and from there, Thoughts simply flowed: “It very much felt like I was releasing,” Pierce says. “I had this visual of turning a handle and watching steam just pour out of the valve, relieving a lot of my artistic and personal anxiety. I was dealing with so much loss and feeling unsure and scared—and if there’s one thing I can rely on it’s the healing power of being an artist. I’m falling back in love with music. Creating this album on my own was a full-on long-running therapy session.”

“Heart Basel” by The Drums from the album ‘Abysmal Thoughts,’ available June 16th on Antire Records

Across a year and three months of home recording—with the same guitar, synthesizer, drum machine and reverb unit he’s played since the beginning of The Drums—Pierce put together Thoughts, first in that apartment in Los Angeles and then later in his cabin in upstate New York. With help from engineer Jonathan Schenke (Parquet Courts, Mannequin Pussy and more) he gave Thoughts a pop sensibility that added color and contrast to an already vivid self-portrait alive with the hyperdramatic emotional potency of the Smiths, the arch literary pop moves of New Zealanders like the Verlaines and the Clean, and the riotous clatter-punk power of the UK DIY bands of 1979. And this time around he’s introduced an slight influence from early drum and bass as well, drawn from his adoration of Roni Size and other electronic artists from the UK in the 1990s.

Now the highs are higher than ever, and the lows absolutely bottomless, and it’s the last song—the title track—that makes everything clear. The Drums are back, and while there’s a heavy sadness here, Jonny Pierce is stronger for fighting through it. On possibly the loveliest and catchiest song he’s got, Pierce takes his listeners to the edge of the cliff, and then drops everything but his voice, singing “Abysmal, abysmal, abysmal …” Some albums might offer a happy ending—even some albums by The Drums—but here Pierce just offers an ending. Because that’s more honest, isn’t it?
“There’s something in me that mostly prefers a sad ending,” he says. “The other potential title I had was A Blip Of Joy, the opposite of Abysmal Thoughts—if those two things don’t sum up the emotional chaos that I feel every day, then nothing will! But Abysmal Thoughts wins because … doesn’t it always?”