by Mark Wadley (@markplasma)
There’s probably a horseshoe theory meme already floating around the darkened corners of social media diagramming the punk-psych schism, starting with the Stooges at the apex and expanding outward—through all the various proto- and post- permutations, all the microgenres either embracing or eschewing electronics, all the levels of preachy idealism and druggy nihilism (or is it druggy idealism and preachy nihilism?)—until it wraps back around to this moment in punk, with a shitty screenshot of the cover of The Drin’s Today My Friend You Drunk the Venom at the bottom. While we can argue over the accuracy of arbitrary taxonomies assembled by anonymous meme accounts, it’d be very hard to build a case against this excellent record—out now on the increasingly indispensable Feel It Records—as anything but an exemplar in its field, an inspired melding of brooding post-punk, expansive kosmische and jangly psychedelia bound to leave a legion of decent-to-good imitations in its wake.
From its origins as Dylan McCartney’s solo outlet, The Drin has evolved into a rock-solid six-piece—and while they’re treading similar sonic ground as previous releases Engines Sing for the Pale Moon and Down River in the Distance, this new configuration represents a tremendous leap forward in urgency, power, and sound quality. Driven by proud bass riffs and trashy drums, each song feels like an exercise in mood and texture, the synths and guitars alternately stabbing and droning at the periphery of McCartney’s ominous, mostly spoken vocals. There’s a welcome variety of song structure and vibe represented here, from the pure punk of “Stonewallin’” and “Walk So Far” to the spacious, Morricone-tinged “Go Your Way Alone.” Don’t forget the dub track! The album’s best songs, though, find a balance between these various poles—take lead single “Venom,” with its all-timer of a bass line and relentless percussion blazing a trail directly through the detuned synths and wobbly guitars, or the sublime clatter of “Peaceful, Easy Feeling.”
Of course there are plenty of comparisons to be made here: the paranoiac punk of early Joy Division and The Fall, Sonic Youth and Butthole Surfers’ noisy melodicism, Neu! and Can’s rhythmic insistence, the synthy aggression of more recent standouts like Total Control and Viagra Boys. But those references don’t quite get at the core of why a record like Venom is such a success. This is post-punk in the broader, original sense of both stripping it down and expanding the punk ethos in new directions, lifting ideas and sonic elements from other genres and assimilating them into a new thing you can still dance to. It’s a music that allows for the pinhead asceticism of punk and the indulgent zone-gazing of psych, a microcosm of opposites. All of this is just a roundabout way of stating the obvious: The Drin is a rock ’n’ roll band, and Today You Drunk the Venom is a rock ‘n’ roll record. A really good one. Enough said.