Review: Drummers - s/t

Local three-piece Drummers draws from a lot of sounds you’ve likely heard—or maybe it doesn’t. Herein lies the interesting give and take of the band’s self-titled debut: Fans of new wave emocore acts such as Thursday or the heady art punk of bands like At The Drive In or Drive Like Jehu, will find the songs warmly familiar, but that’s an area populated by a cultish few.

But that qualification aside, Drummers (the album and the band) turns out some impressive results. Punk bands don’t typically get credible nods for musicianship, which only makes Drummers’ flair for jerky arrangements and jarring, yet artful, songcraft refreshing by comparison. Granted, they champion bands a cut above garden variety punk rockers, but the songs walk a fine line of honoring their influences while standing on their own two legs, crashing and burning with the same earnest abandon of their indie rock ancestors. When the band bellows “We make bombs, but no one seems to get hurt” in “Planes II,” it nails the band’s overarching philosophy dead on the head: Lay the indie rock boom on listeners and have crazy fun doing it.