In the blogging universe it’s difficult to ignore The Drones, this in part being due to Seany-boy excitedly pounding millions of gushing posts a day about the group (OK, so he’s slowed down a little lately). That being said his enthusiasm is justified – they certainly are one of the best talents to emerge out of Australia in recent years.

Where The Drones really shine, however, is on the stage. Their recent performance at the Laneway Festival in Sydney was one of the best of the day and the only Laneway Stage set I’ve seen that managed to reach the back of the crowd instead of getting lost in murky acoustics along the way.

If you’ve missed an all-out Drones headlining tour (as I have, to date) fear not! They’ll be soon returning from their overseas tour and doing another lap of Australia in support of their most recent album Havilah. I plan to be at their Sydney show (pending ability to make it back from other commitments), so maybe I’ll see you there!

Here’s the full swag of dates. You can download their third single at the bottom of this post.

I won’t attempt to hide it: I’ve been a terrible blogger lately. I could blame a few things: music projects, Real Work, other projects, having a wonderful daughter and wife that are immensely more fun to be around than computers, you name it.

Having said that, I’ve also had a little less to blog about due to me pushing a lot of news and info that I’d typically blog about through Twitter (you can find me under the name of @flukazoid). I like Twitter because it’s oriented around timely, bite-sized pieces of information. It forces you to not waste words, and functionally it brings that content to life through its network-based community.

That being said, Twitter’s strengths (conciseness in particular) are also its weaknesses, and there’s a lot that can’t be said or communicated with the service.

Over the last couple of months I’ve been thinking about being a little more focused in my use of Twitter and blogging, and have decided that I’m going to use the services like this:

• My Twitter profile will have most most of the news and time sensitive information. I’ll also ramble about stuff I’m listening to, discoveries I’m making, news that’s interesting, gigs I’m seeing. It’ll also have plenty of moments from the rest of my non-musical life, but I hope it’s interesting and entertaining all the same.
• This blog will have (hopefully) more in-depth writing about music, reviews, some more abstract thoughts about music which I have residing in an increasingly large queue. The content on here will hopefully be a lot more pure – less noise and clutter.

So consider this me jumping back into the blogging world, but reserving a lot of content for Twitter. Both are good, with strengths in different places. I’m hoping to use them to their best advantages.

This self-indulgent ramble has now been concluded. Read somebody else’s post, I’m sure it will be of greater value!

The new Odawas album has been getting some plays here lately. I noticed a little buzz surrounding it when it appeared on the radar (mostly thanks to Twitter and some limited blog coverage), but I haven’t heard much more about it. Which surprises me, because I was expecting it to be a lot more controversial than it has been.

So let me just get things out there in the open: I don’t get it.

I don’t get why I find this album enjoyable, why I don’t find it cloying, why it didn’t get tossed out my front door so it could find a new home under the tyres of rush hour traffic.

On paper, the album is not supposed to work. Not only that, it shouldn’t even get a look-in. The songs are open-ended, languid affairs, drenched in dense layers of morose synths. The mix has so much reverb it doesn’t even wade in the stuff, it swims. The percussion frequently reminds me of downtempo AOR staples from the 80s. It’s got plasticky synth-pianos. And to cap it off many of the tracks exhibit FRETLESS BASS. Did I mention synth panpipes?

Yes, I have to fess up: I’m enjoying the record. So the question is: why does it work? The answer, clearly, is that I frankly don’t have the thinnest wisp of a clue.

I never heard the earlier Odawas full-length, so I don’t know how this rates with their earlier work or how it compares in terms of sound. The music on this album is basically super-atmospheric, melodic singer-songwriter music, emerging from a sombre, reflective universe – I haven’t ruled out the possibility that the album was written in a lonely bar on a distant planet where few humans ever venture.

Despite the fact that most of the defining sounds on the album come from synthesized sources, it gives off strongly folk vibes. The harmonica flourishes probably do something to aid this impression, and the fact that the vocals sound uncannily like a young Neil Young at his most yearning doesn’t hurt either. Guitar strums sit nestled amongst the synths from time to time, but overall this album offers tones and sounds that normally don’t get a look-in on singer-songwriter material unless they’re in the hands of someone like Daniel Lanois.

To conclude, this is a grey-weather album. It’s not a daytrip sunshine car album, and it’s not a downtempo party album. It sounds best suited for wet days when you would prefer to curl up in a blanket with a mug of cocoa. Try it out – you might love it, or you may hate it.

(The album has also been given rotation for my daughter Nadia’s bedtime music. She seems to like it for chilling or sleeping to, which gives it bonus points)

You can get your first taste by listening to an mp3 below:

Listen

• Harmless Lover’s Discourse (mp3)