By Jim Rowland
Drink The Sea, a new supergroup uniting some of the most acclaimed musicians of the last three decades from bands like REM, Screaming Trees, Queens Of The Stone Age and Mark Lanegan Band, head over to Europe at the end of this month for their first ever ÜK and European tour. Ahead of that, the band’s first two albums, simply titled ‘I’ and ‘II’, have just been released simultaneously.
Drink The Sea features Peter Buck (R.E.M.), Barrett Martin (Screaming Trees, Mad Season), Alain Johannes (Eleven, Queens of the Stone Age), Duke Garwood (Mark Lanegan Band), percussionist Lisette Garcia and bassist Abbey Blackwell. Many of these musicians have collaborated before over the years, either in the studio or the live arena, and that vast experience has been pooled together for these debut albums. It’s certainly an unusual move to release two debut albums together, and word has it they have already started on album number three.
Each album contains 11 tracks and exudes the quality, experience and virtuosity of each band member. Utilizing a huge array of different instruments, some unusual and exotic perhaps down to Barrett Martin’s expertise on world music, these albums follow an ethereal, atmospheric, light, spacey, airy and delicate musical path, often quite downbeat.
Most have a deep, mournful vocal delivery, not too far away from that of the great Mark Lanegan, which is perhaps not surprising given most if not all of these musicians would have worked with him. Some tracks, such as the excellent ‘Paredes’ and ‘Sacred Tree’, dispense with a traditional vocal in favour of an almost dreamy chant-like delivery.
Whilst these albums follow a distinct musical path of their own, there are certainly hints of former bands within it, certainly Screaming Trees, Mad Season and the Mark Lanegan Band, whilst Peter Buck’s guitar work remains clearly distinctive.
The upcoming tour will see the band perform songs from these albums along with a few selections from previous bands, accompanied by projected films created by the PBS filmmaker Tad Fettig. The music on these albums certainly lends itself to that kind of visual presentation, so those shows promise to be quite a spectacle.
