Deserved or not the hype behind former buzz band The Drums has been in steady decline in recent years and Encyclopedia isn’t going to do them any favours.
Album No. 3 has all the makings of a lemon: it follows a divisive sophomore slump (2011’s Portamento) comes in the wake of a near breakup and finds the band now reduced to two members. It probably isn’t a good sign that each of them is also actively pursuing a solo career.
On record this all plays out rather disastrously with The Drums doing their damnedest to distance themselves from their surfs-up indie-pop past and branch out into new terrain. But whether it’s the overtly jagged and angular psych tactics of “Magic Mountain” the painfully languid balladry of “Break My Heart” or the awkward dark wave of “Let Me” each studio experiment sounds like something that would have been better left in the studio. On top of that the heavy but amateurish use of electronics — which repeatedly sound stuck on factory presets — is borderline offensive.
Sadly The Drums are at their best on Encyclopedia when they occasionally sound like shadows of their former selves and that’s hardly something to be proud of.
