The Drones - Feelin Kinda Free (2016)

Feelin Kinda Free is The Drones' seventh studio album. It was recorded in January 2015 at Tropical Fuck Storm Studios in Melbourne Australia with Aaron Cupples who recorded their 2006 album Gala Mill. It is also the first album original drummer Christian Strybosch has played on since 2005's Wait Long By The River And The Bodies Of Your Enemies Will Float By. He is joined by long time members Gareth Liddiard, Fiona Kitschin, Dan Luscombe and Steve Hesketh. Feelin Kinda Free is a bad trip you can dance to. It's a punch in the brain summed up by the first line of the album's opener Private Execution: "The best songs are like bad dreams". It is not like other music. It is not your stock jock "modern" retro rehash, rather an avant avalanche of everything coming back to haunt. It has been described by Australia's premier Right wing tabloid superstar and Richard Wagner fanboy Andrew Bolt as "stamping on the ashes of the West's musical traditions". Lyrically, it explores themes such as koro syndrome, the fruits of western imperialism, ISIS, celebrity chefs, seaside statecraft, beach-bum race riots, Rupert Murdoch, the new middle eastern/european diaspora, the spectre of neofascism, Hugo Boss, Luftwaffe psychological warfare techniques, girls, sweet revenge, capitalist consumer psychosis, body image dysmorphia/mania, Gertrude Bell, eating people and selling yourself, having great skin, leftist utopianism, scientific triumphalism, E.T. and the mindless assumption that alien lifeforms would be nicer than us simply because of their technological superiority.