The easiest way to explain Drenge’s Strange Creatures is to use “When I Look Into Your Eyes,” the closing track, as a microcosm of the entire album. The bones of the song are simple. Even mundane. It’s a basic acoustic strum, a pretty sing-song melody, and a beat anyone could clap. But in the hands of Drenge, it becomes something much more expansive and dramatic.
The drama begins with singer Eoin Loveless’s voice, which has the wonderful ability to move between characters. Here, on “When I Look Into Your Eyes,” he’s singing with a Morrissey-esque sound, background vocals seemingly coming from chanting monks and Loveless’s guitar chiming selectively through the song. A simple song becomes scary, dense, and interesting, and that’s the gift of Drenge, a gift on full display on Strange Creatures. They know how to put an interesting twist on a song.
Drenge’s previous album, 2015’s excellent Undertow, was a rock record with punk and New Wave flourishes. Strange Creatures flips the proportions. It’s much more textural, drawing a lot from new wave and shoegaze, with drummer Rory Loveless (Eoin’s brother) always luring the song back to those rock roots. The combination works and keeps the album from sounding like an 80’s tribute record.
For instance, on “Bonfire of the City Boys,” the album’s first track, Loveless talks over a drum and bass groove, sounding very much like a British Talking Heads. The anger of his vocals and the relentlessness of the groove is uncomfortable, in a good way. The guitars don’t crash into the song for the first minute or so and Loveless doesn’t actually sing until more than halfway through the song. It’s new wave but with the anger and aggressiveness of punk.
In making the album, the band talked about the idea of making it spooky and it’s an accurate–if unlikely–description, as many of the songs have what can only be described as scary energy.
The title track is a ballad with a sweet melody, but there’s a haze over the track like it’s coming from a fog. Loveless’s guitar is distorted, but also almost whiny, and as it snakes through the track, it gives the entire song a creepiness. “Prom Night,” another ballad, also has an unsettling sound, but in a different way. Here, the fear rises out of a plodding beat and guitars that sound almost like a carnival organ. A saxophone comes out of nowhere and your first thought is “Did they abduct a saxophonist for this?” The saxophone, courtesy of the Loveless’ father, and most probably played off his own free will, also gives the track a very David Bowie kind of feel, which also helps to move the spooky needle.
It would be an oversimplification to say Strange Creatures sounds like an 80’s album, but it’s definitely influenced by the music of that era. What’s nice about the album, though, is that it pours that 80s hair product onto a head full of rock and roll. There are loud, ever-present drums and contemporary guitar tones and textures, that also, somehow, keeps a toe in that new wave sound. Loveless’s voice manages to toggle between characters giving songs a distinctive feel, almost like there’s more than one singer. Rob Graham’s bass is the heartbeat of it all, lending every track a swing that wouldn’t have been out of place in 16 Candles. The pieces fit together expertly and brilliantly. Strange Creatures isn’t about the songs so much as it’s about the layers used to build them. And those layers are pretty impressive. And also a little scary.
