The Drums’ Jonny Pierce drawn to sad songs

"My friend just said to me, are you talking to your therapist?"

It's Sunday morning, somewhere in San Francisco. Jonny Pierce from the Drums has just spent the better part of the past half-hour reflecting on his childhood and his subsequent estrangement from his parents. Pierce's friend has apparently been eavesdropping as he's been opening up about these things and sharing how they relate to his band's latest record, as well as revealing other intriguing insights about the previous two releases.

Like the music he makes with Jacob Graham as the Drums, Pierce isn't afraid to be vulnerable, as evidenced by "Encyclopedia," the band's latest album — not to mention its most gorgeous, expressive, affecting and dour. With lines like "When everyone wants to dance/I can't stand up," "Somewhere in the back of my mind, I crave my own demise," and "I never thought I'd wanna die, but I was looking for a gun, on a cold night, then you found me," there's an unmistakable sense of loneliness and isolation coursing through the platter.

"I'm finally owning how depressed and lonely I am," Pierce acknowledges with a laugh. "I'm putting it to good use, finally, nailing it.

"I think when we put out 'Encyclopedia,' " he continues, "I think half of our fan base was a bit surprised, maybe even put off by it, because of that level of honesty and being transparent and emotionally vulnerable. We had a eureka moment, where we just decided: You know what? We don't know how many more albums we're going to put out, and we really want to make sure that before our chance has come and gone, that we said something and made a dent.

Just the same, some folks — particularly fans of more upbeat songs like "Let's Go Surfing" — have pondered and even posed the question to Pierce: Why on earth he is so prone to writing such sad songs? Aesthetically and artistically, he's just drawn to music that's more downcast, he explains.

"Some of my favorite albums — and the albums that have brought me the most joy in my life — have been miserable albums, that have not a glimmer of hope, not a shred of happiness in them," he notes. "But I'll listen to them the whole thing through and feel like a million bucks because somebody has made themselves available and has just poured their heart out on the table, and you feel that connection.

"I mean, honestly, does anybody feel connected to a song like, 'Let's Go Surfing'?" adds Pierce, who's quoted in the Drums' bio as saying he doesn't think he's felt a day of pure joy in his life. "Like, how do you actually connect to that song?"

Actually, it's hard not to connect with that song. With a buoyant melody matched by optimistic words of hopefulness ("Wake up, it's a beautiful morning, honey, while the stars are still shining"), it's like a real-time rush of endorphins every time you hear it. But while the tune — which sort of came to represent the Drums' sound early on — seems like a stark contrast to the act's more morose material, even it is reflective of how Pierce was feeling at the time. Oh, and despite its title, the song's not about what it might appear to be on the surface.

"I wrote that song the day that President Obama was elected," Pierce recalls. "And I was not alone with feeling this big wave of relief and excitement and maybe I was a little overly excited. I was down in Florida — that's where I escaped to start the band, because I didn't want to be influenced by what was happening in Brooklyn — and I remember that night. There were fireworks going off all over the place, and people were running out of their houses onto the street, just screaming and crying tears of joy. Really, I've actually never seen anything like that. It felt like we were in a movie or something."

That exhilarating moment was more of an anomaly, though, it seems. As the Drums continue to progress, lyrically, at least, you can expect those sorts of melancholy-free mementos to become fewer and fewer in the near future, from the sound of it.

"We just started our new album," he reveals. "We're about four songs in, and it makes 'Encyclopedia' feel a little bit guarded still. So this next album, we're really going for it. It reads much more like a diary. 'Encyclopedia' has themes of loneliness and sadness and depression and fear — and some hope, here and there — but they're still a bit generalized, where a lot of people could really relate.

"And with the new album, there's really specific detail that kind of reads more like a diary, like my own, personal diary," he goes on. "I came from a really abusive, dark childhood, and my teenage years were really pretty bad, and I'm 30 years old now, and I'm still dealing with this stuff. You can't just shake it off one day. Sometimes it takes your whole life. Sometimes you live and die, and you can't fully shake some of this stuff."

If not hard to see why the past still haunts Pierce. Raised in a radically religious home, where he was home-schooled, the musician was inherently at odds with his parents over his sexuality. "My parents are born-again pastors," says Pierce, who's now an atheist. "They lead anti-gay rallies." Almost three years ago, he made the difficult decision to sever ties with his folks. "The last thing I said to them was, 'If you have a change of heart, I'll be waiting here with my arms wide open. But until then, I can't keep pretending I'm someone else when I'm around you. That's not fair to either of us.'"

Like his relationship with his parents, Pierce has been able to work through whatever's weighed on him with his music, and he found a kindred spirit in Graham, the other half of the Drums, whom he met at bible camp growing up. The two musicians bonded over a shared love of Joy Electric, a Christian-based act fronted by Ronnie Martin, who ended up releasing music from Goat Explosion, the pair's pre-Drums outfit, on his Plastiq Musiq imprint.

Martin wasn't just a benefactor, though. His group proved to be influential on the early sound of the Drums, as did Morrissey and the Smiths, which Pierce discovered from a casual mention from Martin. Listening to the Drums' 2010 self-titled debut and its follow-up, "Portamento," which are both notably brighter musically, you can certainly hear the influence.

"I have always had a fetish for the perfect pop song," Pierce confesses. "But you have to go beyond that. I was too obsessed with that idea for the first album. So that took precedent — like, 'Oh, these have to be perfect pop songs.' And I sort of, a little bit, sacrificed, or didn't pay enough attention to what the songs were actually saying. So now, through the years, I've kind of figured out, oh, yeah, you can have a great pop song, but it has to be meaningful. It has to mean something. It has to mean something to you in order for it to mean s--t to anyone else."

But while, tonally, there's a distinction from those early songs to the newer material, thematically, those albums were no less cathartic for Pierce, who says that both releases were just as profoundly affecting to him emotionally.

"I never loved someone so hard as I loved him," he confides of the inspiration for those records. "It was pretty insane. Every waking moment was about him. I don't know if I ever got that back, but I kind of, maybe, tricked myself into thinking I was getting it back. And then just one day, he was gone, and it really destroyed me. I mean big time. Where I just couldn't eat and I couldn't sleep.

"I thought that stuff was from the movies, and it actually happened to me," he says. "It was like, 'Oh, this is a thing, where you don't eat and you don't sleep, and you have no hope and all that. So the first two records were pretty much heartbreak records, that were all about him.

"But you know what, we've come full-circle — well, not full-circle," he adds, "we've come, like, semi-circle. We're friendly again. We've been talking over text message, and I think things are much better. We're good now. It's one of those things that I had to shut the door on, but it came back in a nice, healthy way. Now I'm happily married to somebody that I love very much."

While we may hear all about this part of Pierce's life at some point, for now, there's still plenty of the past that needs to be purged on the follow up to "Encyclopedia."

"I came out of that record feeling like I had healed a bit from the past, when you finally just put that stuff down," he concludes. "So it will be a continuation of that, but even more explicit. It feels really good to be able to just make that decision and say, you know what, I'm just, you know, say goodbye to privacy, but who cares? Let's make some real art. Let's make something beautiful and personal"

Read more from Dave Herrera at bestoflasvegas.com. Contact him at dherrera@reviewjournal.com.