Tour­ing in sup­port of their recent­ly released album Gala Mill, The Drones got off to an inaus­pi­cious start here in Philadel­phia. Plagued by equip­ment prob­lems and time con­straints, lead singer and gui­tarist Gareth Lid­di­ard’s frus­tra­tion was vis­i­ble, and humor seemed his only recourse. Com­plain­ing about the sound, he remarked wry­ly, laugh­ing, “We usu­al­ly sound like Van Halen…right after David Lee Roth left.”

But for all the on stage frus­tra­tion, The Drones deliv­ered a cathar­tic set fea­tur­ing songs from last year’s crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed Wait Long By The Riv­er & The Bod­ies Of Your Ene­mies Will Float By and their lat­est, a col­lec­tion of stark, earnest songs as arid and bleak as the Aus­tralian countryside.

Attempt­ing to record an “Aus­tralian” album sounds like an under­tak­ing akin to writ­ing The Great Amer­i­can Nov­el [see The Hold Steady’s recent attempts of same in re: Amer­i­ca for com­par­i­son], yet it’s one that Lid­di­ard’s full-throat­ed, caus­tic vocals seem capa­ble of grasp­ing. From the ten­der “Dog-Eared” to the rau­cous “I Don’t Ever Want To Change”, to the tem­pest tos’t “Shark Fin Blues”, The Drones cap­tured a range of moods that could well encom­pass some­thing so daunt­ing and so vast.

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Take a sec­ond and think about record stores and live music and counter that with the per­cep­tion that the world is abuzz with new music all the time. There’s more prod­uct than ever! But the record stores piece is old hat; what hap­pens when they’re gone is a dif­fer­ent mat­ter. But as the Times points out, does that mean that some unprof­itable gen­res will die off with them?

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Com­ing shortly:

• Reviews and pho­tos of Dev­as­ta­tions & The Drones
• A con­sid­er­a­tion of Volk­er Schlöndorff’s ear­ly work, includ­ing Young Törless, The Lost Hon­or of Katha­ri­na Blum, Le Coup de Grâce & The Tin Drum.
• A review of Chris Nolan’s The Pres­tige
• And in hon­or of Hal­loween, should­n’t this have received a 6.66?

Bal­ti­more’s Beach House play music that Amer­i­can­izes Broad­cast in much the same way that Pave­ment did the Fall. Not only do they achieve that much sought after soft, kalei­do­scop­ic focus and gauzy feel, they also fash­ion a min­i­mal­is­tic, ele­gant psy­che­delia that empha­sizes the pas­toral rather than the mod­ern. There’s a lot to be said for artists who choose expres­sion­ism to con­vey mean­ing, rely­ing more on images and mood than lyrics alone; think of Michael Stipe’s inde­ci­pher­able lyrics on Mur­mur and all the poet­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties! But as Beach House­’s sus­pend­ed melodies scud like clouds over sput­ter­ing click­tracks and key­board demos, time slows down and it’s impos­si­ble to for­get how roman­tic and win­some Mazzy Star sound­ed on “Fade Into You”, and how inchoate and imme­di­ate those sen­sa­tions and excite­ment remain.

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Lis­ten: Dev­as­ta­tions — I Don’t Want to Lose You Tonight

The scene: Tele­visión Educa­ti­va. The place: some­where with­in Stephane Miroux’s dream scape, which bears an uncan­ny like­ness to any morn­ing info­tain­ment pro­gram set, replete with musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment a la Laugh-In, a kitchen island for con­coct­ing potions and demon­stra­tion props galore. This is where Stephane nar­rates his own dream, recount­ing a sto­ry about his late father and he enjoy­ing a Duke Elling­ton con­cert. It’s at once mag­i­cal and far­ci­cal, yet poignant, so fresh is the mem­o­ry of his father. Once again, direc­tor Michel Gondry treats us to his rare com­bi­na­tion of mind/body gyra­tions, as well as the entan­gle­ments of history/memory, with more than a lit­tle sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty mixed in for good measure.

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