Great drums make the pop song. It’s not just the pattern and the rhythm, it’s the way the drums are recorded and mixed. They can be big and deep or flat and harsh. There is no one sound that’s right.
For example, check out the beginning to the track “The Fallen” off Franz Ferdinand’s sophomore album You Could Have It So Much Better, which came out in October of last year. A guitar line starts the song off and then drummer Paul Thomson pounds out a beat. Listen carefully to the sound of the drums. Is that a phase shift effect that’s used? It’s possible that this is the work of producer Rich Costey, but I hate guessing who bears responsibility for what on a song.
I’ve edited the track — extending the intro for dramatic purposes and throwing the drum intro back in at the end.
My favorite track off First Impressions of Earth, the new album from The Strokes (their 3rd), kicks the album off with a swinging beat. Fabrizio Moretti is on the kit. “You Only Live Once” has a great beat, but listen carefully to the sound, like the swoosh of beating a rug.
The Strokes’ vocalist Julian Casablancas said this about the album’s producer David Kahne:
He has a very technical knowledge and he’ll be very quick to casually spew it out… He likes that atonal modern stuff, so he doesn’t mind being weird and original, and that’s what he prays for. But then, sometimes something that just has a cool thing that’s not popular, he’ll want to transform it into something that could be more accessible, but all its coolness is erased. That’s the main compromise that we have trouble with. I mean sure, I understand on every mindless level why it’s, like, pleasant, but no, it’s not what I want to sing. It’s the difference between lame and cool… David gets seriously good sounds, and I don’t even have to be there when they do the drums and bass and most of the guitars. I think we realized that what we wanted is not some professional slickness to our music, it’s the mixture of someone who has that kind of knowledge, with the kind of thing that we want — which is something that doesn’t exist too much.
Again, I’ve extended the song’s beginning slightly.
Franz Ferdinand – The Fallen — BUY
The Strokes – You Only Live Once — BUY
3 Responses
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Sean Says:
quoting Mano Negra?
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The Pop View Says:
Are you referring to the post title? I don’t know if Mano Negra ever covered it, but it’s the beginning to Cole Porter’s classic “Night and Day.”
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Sean Says:
I’m guessing they lifted it then, their song “King Kong Five”starts with the words “now listen to the beat, beat of the song song, buzzing in my head, head like a tom tom”. It must be a reference to Porter…