Drift is the seventh long-player from music’s most under-appreciated, The Men, which also happens to equate to a productive one album per year since their first in 2011. From shouty rock beginnings on
Leave Home, through the accessible indie and even folk and country sensibilities on
Open Your Heart and
New Moon, to the high-end production days of
Tomorrow’s Hits, and then back again to the fuck yeah on 2016’s
Devil Music, The Men are rock music’s pinnacle shapeshifters.
So what of Drift? Well first off it’s a return to old label fav’s Sacred Bones having ventured out on their own for a bit, but more interestingly it’s a record that seeks high experimentation and – difficult as it is for The Men at this point – completely new ground. For instance, only sporadic signs of electric guitar; unthinkable for a record by The Men in many respects.
Drift opener ‘Maybe I’m Crazy’ is a sublime, fuzzy chugger of an electronic persuasion. You haven’t heard it on an album by The Men before that’s for certain. ‘Rose On Top Of The World’ is more familiar (whatever familiar means when talking about The Men); it’s a track that slips nicely on Open Your Heart, for some the defining period of the band.
In 2016 The Men released Devil Music, a record that the band released as a literal explosion; a re-discovery of self. As a listen it is generally agreed that it is the poorest of The Men’s records. But it was a necessary outburst that has enabled them to reinvent and start again. Drift is the result and it is superb.
Released: March 2018
Cat: SBR191
Label: Sacred Bones
