by Thom JurekAustralia's Drones set the American underground on fire with 2005's Wait Long by the River and the Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By. It is a wily combination of Aussie garage rock, country, psychedelia, and pathological sonic experimentation presented raw and immediate with the poetically strange and storytelling lyrics of frontman Gareth Liddiard. The songs, played with a spiky crackling energy and recklessness, pushed critics to the brink of superlatives in order to describe them. Released in 2006, Gala Mill is named for the rural place in southeast Tasmania where the album was recorded. The Drones are no less on the fringe this time out, and the album's sound is, if possible, even more immediate than its two predecessors. One can hear dogs barking, musicians coughing, and birds singing in and between cuts. And Liddiard is even wordier this time out -- to positive effect. "Jezebel," the slow, roiling eight-minute opener, is coiled to bust loose at any moment and addresses topics as unrelated as the death of journalist Daniel Pearl in the Middle East, nuclear testing in the Australian homeland, and a school massacre that is infamous in Aussie history. Liddiard refers to world events, history, mythology. Politics, sex, desire, tragedy, and other indecipherable topics are presented side by side as a way of weaving a new series of myths and texts that erupt from the belly of rock & roll. While there may be no direct influence at all, former Aussie rockers Crime & the City Solution fronted by Simon Bonney did the same on their cult gem The Bride Ship in the late '80s. "Dog Eared," with a gorgeous violin played by Michelle Lewitt, feels like Neil Young's "Cortez the Killer" crossed with Nick Cave's Boatman's Call album. The kind of love revealed in this tune is so vulnerable that it becomes abusive. The slow, plodding lyric lines adorned by switchblade guitars and unraveling instrumental passages are infectious and purely Australian -- they feel closer to the strange experimentation the Band did on Stage Fright, but are culturally outside the North American experience and feel closer to Australia's wild country music read through garage rock and post-punk. ... Read More...