Album Review: The Drones - I See Seaweed

A few random piano notes give way to a guitar's studied catgut screech. Gareth Liddiard's corrugated voice then intones memories now curdled, with energy and music that crashes or recedes as it goes. Yes, welcome to a new Drones album – and all is well in a world that isn't.

I See Seaweed is familiar, yet contradicts itself, and comes from different places. There are times, like the eight minutes of calenture in that opening title track described above, where spaces are left, recalling Liddiard's own Strange Tourist where things unfurled in their own sweet time. Then a couple of tracks later A Moat You Can Stand In's religious clubbing is as dense, angry and unrelenting in its attack as anything they've done. The words tumble out over Mike Noga's crashing and rattling drums, while the guitars shoulder headlong across each other. Added element, Steve Hesketh's piano and keyboards, look for a place to elbow in.

And those words: at times more closely focused, but often more impressionistic. Then, just as you think it's all looking outward, there are times it is very much a view reduced down to a computer screen. Nine Eyes channels that specific Google Maps experience of stalking your suburban childhood, getting territorial and sentimental at the changes, while the closing Why Write A Letter That You'll Never Send, as the rambling, bitter, poetic, desperate, important and impotent late night email is 'read verbatim' – just like that missive from Banjo Paterson's Clancy Of The Overflow, and yet so not.

Yes, it's a new Drones album – and as always, you'll keep finding new corners as you listen closer.