Drummer – Feel Good Together
Drummer is a five-piece band comprised of Ohio-based drummers who shed their primary instrument (well all but one) to form a super group of, well, Ohio-based drummers (is that a thing?). The most notable member of the band is bass player (first time that has ever been said), Patrick Carney, whose day job is providing beats for The Black Keys. The other four drummers that make up the rest of, um, Drummer have spent time in the bands Teeth of Hydra, Party of Helicopters, Beaten Awake, Houseguest, The Six Parts Seven, and Ghostman & Sandman. This week the band releases their debut, Feel Good Together, on Carney’s own Audio Eagle Records.
Feel Good Together is not a bad record. It is solid in it’s riffs, the rhythm section is top notch (as it should be), I don’t even have any qualms with the vocals, which are very reminiscent of The Replacements era Paul Westerberg (which is a great thing!). But something is keeping me from loving Feel Good Together. I hate to say this, because I know that I am beating a dead horse, but Feel Good Together would probably get more mileage if four or five songs were shaved off and it was released as an EP.
Tracks like ‘Lottery Dust’, ‘Every Nineteen Minutes’, ‘Good Golly’ and ‘Diamonds to Shake’ would make an exciting debut EP for the band, making you anticipate a great LP. But having everything released all together, mediocre tracks included, make for a lukewarm introduction to a potentially interesting band. This is exactly what plagued Rain Machine’s debut, the overzealous urge to release quantity over quality. Drummer, however, had the decency of keeping each of the songs in the 3-4 minute range.
Overall, Feel Good Together isn’t a total loss. There are some solid jams that are perfect if they came up on shuffle, but for a continuous listen, Feel Good Together just doesn’t, err, feel good together.
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