Ears Wide Open: DRINKS

Daiana Feuer on November 2nd, 2015

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DRINKS, a collaboration between White Fence’s Tim Presley and Welsh rocker Cate Le Bon, is delightfully strange. On their album, “Hermits on Holiday,” recently released by Birth Records and Heavenly Recordings, the two take turns at guitar and other instruments, and friends from one another’s bands lend their skills and idiosyncrasies as needed. With lyrics that feel poetically spontaneous and instrumentation that seems to pop out wherever the right place might be, if someone said this record was written in the basement of the Chelsea Hotel in the 1970s, I would totally believe it. Listening to these songs is like finding more and more prizes in the cereal box, a spoonful of discovery in every bite. The bio they served up for the project makes very little sense, which is oddly satisfying. It begins with “Tim, do I like that dog?” and explains the duo’s origins in terms of string, weather, and building materials. While their musical backgrounds differ, apparently their combined powers can be used to predict the sex of babies. What more, they are inspired by drinking coffee together. “DRINKS is a solo project,” they say, “not a collaboration. It has one mouth, one set of lungs, one mind and four legs.” While that last bit might conjure up a circus sideshow freak or some kind of horse with a pretty accent, perhaps what they really mean is that DRINKS is an entity unto itself, created by these two talented beings, but that it has its own identity, and an extra set of legs to boot. Clearly, Le Bon and Presley are having fun.

||| Watch: “Laying Down Rock” and “Hermits On Holiday”