When the Drums first emerged, I mentally slotted Jonny Pierce's music alongside bands like Beach Fossils, Real Estate, Wavves, and Best Coast — a guitar-driven complement to the summery lo-fi synth sounds we were hearing from the emergent chillwave scene. But the project has evolved a lot over the years, and his new single shows he could have just as easily been a chillwaver himself.
Pierce is in full-on retro synth-pop mode on new single "It Didn't Matter," the first release on his new label Abysmal Records. It pairs him with the Iranian American alternative artist Mareux. Against a lush backdrop of keyboard sounds, the two artists take turns in the spotlight and sometimes join forces in harmonies that lend heat to the track's frigid pulse. The chorus brings the song's animating heartache to the fore: "And all this time I've been hurting for you/ Whenever I tried, it didn't matter." When that guitar hits at the end, I feel like I'm hearing the hottest post-Drive buzz band of 2012 (complimentary) channeling suave new wave classics.
Pierce offered this statement:
Not since writing my earliest music has a song come together so effortlessly. Whenever that happens, it makes me feel certain the song was meant to exist—that it needed to be here, for all of us. Mareux's synthesizer wizardry threw me back to my teenage years, when almost everything I listened to was synthesizer-based music, especially synth-pop. His sounds, textures, and perfect pop chord changes reminded me of the soundtrack to such a tender time in my life—when I was desperate for love but just couldn't find it, and synthesizers became the soundtrack to my sadness. This one is for those of us who keep banging our heads against the wall of another heart, only to be given nothing in return.
"It Didn't Matter" is billed as the first in a series of new Drums songs leading up to an LP next year. Hear it below.
