The Drop: The Horror and Chelsea Clinton
by J. Kim

[6/1/2000] In the age of baby-boy-ragecore, an all-male band which communicates to other men as adults deserves automatic kudos. Their songs may take time to fully appreciate, but the members of The Drop prefer to illuminate their audience as would soft candles, instead of garish fluorescent lighting. The Drop recently provided those soft beacons at their debut CD release party, May 19, at the Sit and Spin, Seattle, and before the show I talked to them.

The Drop has not met a pedal they would kick out of bed. Since they explore so many possible sounds with their instruments, occasionally a part resembles something done before, but everything has been done before at some level. Their music feels like drowning while stoned: you sense sadness and possibly doom, but your head keeps swirling so much that you do not notice the pain. For their release, The New Horror Guidelines, the band took traditional rock instruments and layer them with subtly and complexity. The band name derives from the process of dropping layer upon layer, including such delicate sounds such as a vibraslap on "Faces Maudlin." While some songs such as "In the Red Red Room" on The New Horror Guidelines, jump out quickly, other songs such as "Positive Affirmation" take many listens and much volume to truly appreciate, but linger longer in the conscience. However, just because they can, they included their one "bad boy" tune. In "Chelsea," lead singer Christopher McBride makes a plea for a lady named Chelsea to sit on his face while her dad is on TV. Surely someday this serenade will provide her with a bounty of pleasure. Or not.

Comic relief such as "Chelsea" often arises when bands do not over-edit their lyrics and second-guess their song selections. McBride, who writes the lyrics, rarely lyrics on paper. He believes lyric creation should come by just letting the words out, instead of meticulously structuring word rhyme and meter. "It's just like the psychoanalytic process," said McBride. "The more you sing it, the more the words find you." He claims song creation is like therapy as a cathartic catalyst, but then jokes that it can be so disturbing and lengthy - sometimes three to four months for one son - he suspects they need therapy afterwards. All four band members concur on this point and have discovered dimensions of themselves during their time together.

Drummer Chris Kemp has discovered that despite the commitment and level of trust being a band takes, he could not image not playing. Guitarist Roman Parker has discovered that he has little ego left. When he first started, he would play a part for the others and any disapproval would crush him. Now, he says, "I can handle anything."

Contrarily, McBride says he has the largest band ego and if he offers something to the others, any disapproval causes him to mope. Bassist Sugar discovered, "I'm such a perfectionist that I'm an asshole." These variously personality types came together at a flop house in Bellingham where Parker and McBride met. Soon after they moved to Santa Cruz, California to start a band called Painted Sun. They have since moved back to Seattle. After finding Sugar, they hatched Death Dreams Enable, whose the name snuck into their "Faces Maudlin" track. Later they found Kemp at a yard sale, and The Drop began in 1998.

Individually, they all entered the musical domain at different ages. McBride remembers singing at age five. His father sang folk songs and taught him a tune called "Bon Du Wah" which described a man getting drunk and throw in jail, from where he begged his lover to bring him provision. He also owned an Andy Gibb guitar who, sadly, met an early demise because his father failed to tune it properly. Kemp also remembers his first song. At age 15, he commenced drumming with the song "When the Levee Breaks," which he credits having helped with his food/hand coordination in drumming. Parker picked up his first guitar at age 13 and started off with Led Zeppelin, not a place for beginners, per se, but an inspiration to many young male guitarists. Four his tenth birthday, Sugar begged his mother for a guitar. However, he did not receive a bass guitar, so he took matters into his own hands by removing strings to make it a bass.

They all share the same reason for remaining in music. "I don't really have a choice," said McBride as his bandmates nodded in agreement. He then worried that all musicians say that and it must sound utterly cliche. Sometimes, however, the most cliche statements bear the most truth. Unlike other bands that offer the listener dramatic and mellifluous music, with the interspersion of aggressive and driving work, such as the Catherine Wheel, they use few metaphors in their music. McBride comes right and and wails, "I love you" instead of cloaking it with poetic language for the listener to discern. "It it [use of metaphor] is done right, it's perfect; if it's done incorrectly, it's horrid," said McBride. Though he uses direct language, McBride thinks he dances around topics and does not discover or reveal the central meaning until the end of the song. Sugar offered another theory. "I think the lyrics as a whole are a huge metaphor," said Sugar. He calls the directness an illusion in that McBride often buries the truth underneath the words.The band prides itself on such honesty, via which they will connect with their audience.

During their live shows, they want to create an intimate emotional bond between band and audience. Therefore, even though the thought of dancing girls on stage danced through their heads, they do not provide much visually. The honesty is admirable, however a band striving for this goal has to bear it all emotionally to truly reach people. Lou Barlow can sit in a chair, play an acoustic guitar, and lead the audience to profound levels emotionally. Tori Amos can do the same from a piano. Those artists reach down and pull out the entire contents of their heart, spleen, liver, kidneys and stomach for the audience to see, hear, touch, feel and smell. The Drop is just a couple small steps from doing that. They still hold something back and have not truly bled into their music and onto the stage (metaphorically, of course, in today's germ-phobic world the Iggy Pop interpretation is passe). If they can take that leap, they will be truly powerful. To do this takes tremendous strength and courage for anyone. In an overly-reserved city like Seattle, this is a super-size order. To do it and not sound like a tacky Ricky Lake show takes intelligence. The Drop has the intelligence part down

Not only did they entitle a song "Carl Jung" but also McBride knows can explain Jung's process of analysis. In the song, he pleads for the explanations over a Shaft-style mac-daddy groovy vibe. On that track, McBride employs vocals that Italian men once had to undergo castration to reach, McBride relies on breath control and warm-ups. He calls this cross on the T of their signature sound natural for him.

"If you're a bass, you can't do a head voice and if you're a tenor you can't do Johnny Cash," said McBride.

And if you're a band that views the world with an intelligent eye, you cannot play chest-beating Neanderthal music. The Drop will probably never have 15-year-old girls taking their tops off at their shows, but grown-ups need music too. Ecstatic about their new record release, the band plans to play live heavily to support it. Soon maybe, they will drop into your town also. (Be kind, at least the bad pun was reserved for the very end.)

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