The Drums – aka Jonny Pierce – is undressing in front of us all in his new eponymous studio record, Jonny, out now via ANTI-records. The album has been in the making for three and a half years, and it was mainly written in a cabin in upstate New York, where Jonny spent over a year in almost complete solitude in the early days of the pandemic. The 16-track album is where we see Pierce in his most raw and vulnerable form, both as a songwriter and as a person, daring to look at the beauty of overcoming traumas and his biggest insecurities in the name of art.
“When I finished Jonny, I listened to it, and I heard my soul reflected back at me,” says Pierce about the record. The album is a reclamation of a lifetime in the making, even down to the intimate album and single artwork – a series of naked self-portraits snapped when he returned to his childhood home in New York a decade ago. Jonny describes this project as a “love letter to his younger selves” and all his different versions that still live within. “It is devastating and triumphant, it is lost and found, it is confused and certain, it is wise and foolish. It is male and female, it is hard and gentle. To encapsulate one’s whole self in an album, to honour each and every part of you – even the parts that feel at odds with each other, is to make something deeply human, and because my religion is humanism, the album becomes a sacred place for me to worship. Each feeling a different pew, each song a hymn to the human heart,” finishes Pierce.
On the final countdown to the release of the album, we sat down with Jonny Pierce for an emotion-drenched interview, given insight into his long, gentle, and introspective writing process for Jonny, as well as discussing how he sees his musical evolution until now and what excites him most in the future with The Drums.
Listen to the album…
Read the full interview…
Congratulations on the new album. Where are you currently based and what have you been up to since finishing this project?
Thank you so much. I’m really excited that the album is finally gonna see the light of day. It’s been three and a half years in the making and it’s been quite a journey getting to this moment. I’ve been spending most of my time between New York City and upstate New York where I have a small little cabin, which is actually where I wrote a lot of the music and recorded a lot of the music on the new album.
How are you feeling in the final countdown to the release?
Gosh, it really depends on what time of day you ask me and what day it is and what the weather’s like and, you know, what my cup of coffee was like in the morning. I feel all over the place. I think mostly I just feel calm and peaceful about it, which is new for me. I think it’s the fruits of taking my time making this album and doing it with a lot of love.
And I don’t know, for me, I’ve realized if I’m really present in the album making and I know I’ve done my best to honor my heart all the way through, then I can’t really ask myself for much more than that. So I feel at peace knowing that all of the songs on the album were the fruits, or were the result of me honoring my artistic heart as best as I could in the moment. So it feels really good to know that as I’m releasing new music.
Jonny struck me as a deeply personal album. Can you tell us what inspired you to confront these difficult memories through your music?
Well, it’s really interesting because I never made a decision that I was going to write a deeply personal album. However, I was in the space of diving deep into inside of me trying to understand myself. And I think I started therapy about six years ago. And in my very first session, at the end of it, kind of explaining why I was there. My therapist looked at me and said, Jonny, I want you to try something this week. Can you try being gentle with yourself? And I remember thinking, I am gentle with myself. What do you mean? And he said, you know, just try to make gentle choices this week. And he kind of explained this to me.
And so I, I did, I really tried to be in a gentle space and be in a space of self forgiveness and self compassion and taking time to do nothing and letting myself kind of daydream. And I ended up really benefiting from that. And I was noticing myself slowing down a little bit and being less ambitious and less driven. You know, my whole life, I had been a really hard worker, not because I loved working, but because I really needed to survive. I came from a pretty difficult space or upbringing. And so I was already in this space of learning how to be soft and gentle. And then in 2020, the pandemic hit. And I came up to this cabin here and escaped New York City, because we didn’t really know what COVID was at the time. And I thought I might be up here for a couple weeks. And I ended up staying up here for over a year in almost complete solitude.
And, that was really, that was like stillness and calm. You know, 2.0. And it really kind of ushered in this era of my life of really having all the time in the world to just do nothing and be with my thoughts and be with my heart. And I started seeing these different parts of myself emerge that I had never experienced before. And I started going sort of back in time and being with the younger versions of myself and asking them questions and trying to start a dialogue between these different parts of myself, the younger Jonny and the modern day Jonny.
I started to understand the younger parts of me, and also started to feel their pain. I wanted to comfort them. And all the while I was making music here and there, I didn’t decide to make an album. I was just writing a song, you know, one day and then taking a month off. And I decided that I only wanted to make music when my whole body, my heart and soul, and my mind were in agreement that it was time to write. So that was very different. I was giving a lot of space and in a way being gentle with my work, being gentle with my album and being gentle with my songs. So after a few years of this, I had an album. And I think because there was so much tenderness and love and understanding in the process of making the album, I just felt really safe to be vulnerable and to talk about things that were very difficult in a space that felt safe.
You and the drums have evolved and experimented with your sound over the years. How does Jonny fit into the band’s musical evolution? And what can fans expect in terms of this album’s sonic identity?
So I think anyone who’s really familiar with The Drums would hear this album and think, oh, it’s The Drums, definitely The Drums. I’m really proud to say that at this point in my career, The Drums kind of have their own distinct sound. And that feels really good to be able to say. I would say the differences on this album from the others, like I said before, is in the past, I would work really hard. And when it was time to make an album, I would sit down and I would work until the album was made and done and finished. And then I would take a break.
Whereas with this new album, there was so much sweetness and space and stillness and patience and love going into it. So it took me a lot longer to make because I wasn’t rushing anything. Sonically, it’s a bit more sparse at parts. There’s a lot more room in some of these songs. Some of the songs are just vocals. Some of the songs are vocals with a very simple synthesizer sequence or arpeggio. And like I said earlier, I wanted to honor the younger parts of myself on this album and give the younger Jonny a chance to shine on the record.
So, a song like “Pool God” was recorded using a synthesizer I’ve had since I was 13 and used to use a lot to record songs in my childhood bedroom. And that was a way for me to escape the trauma of what was going on around me and what was happening to me. And so I dusted off that synthesizer for this album and I used it quite a bit to honor that younger version of me. So you’ll hear a lot of electronic elements throughout the album. So yeah, playing with space and letting the album take a break here and there was really important to me, just like I need a break here and there.
The album is described as a love letter to your younger selves. Which tracks do you feel most directly address or connect with these past versions of yourself?
I’ve got to be honest and say I think each song represents a different version, a different younger self. And some of them represent modern-day Jonny and there may even be one or two that represent the future me. When I listen to the album, I really hear my soul reflected back at me. And I think it took 16 songs because of the complexity of who I am and how I feel and what’s gone on in my life. It took that many tracks to be able to fully represent all of me or at least all of me that I understand right now.
What do you expect listeners to take away from this album?
My deepest wish is that listeners would feel heard and seen themselves. I think part of why I’m so vulnerable in my work is there’s that little boy in me who wasn’t seen and wasn’t heard and wasn’t understood and wasn’t loved as a child. And that little boy influences my songwriting. And I think to be vulnerable is at least there’s a chance there to be understood and be seen and known and ultimately be loved and to feel like I belong. So I hope that other people feel seen. I hope that my listeners feel seen, feel that I see them and I understand what they’re going through. At the very least that they’re not alone and that they belong to this little Drums family.
The album artwork features intimate self-portraits taken in your childhood home. How did revisiting those places and capturing those moments contribute to the album’s narrative and your own personal journey?
So those photos are really tricky for me. There’s days where I really love them. And I think, yes, I’m so glad I used them. This feels really powerful for me. This feels very punk for me. This feels poetic. It feels so many different ways. And there’s other days where I wake up and I can’t even look at the photos and I feel embarrassed and scared and too vulnerable.
And that kind of makes a lot of sense for me because the album is about all of those conflicting emotions. You know, there’s a song about being angry. There’s a song about being very joyful and in love. There’s a song about understanding the feminine part of me. And then there’s a song about being a little boy. You know, there’s all these parts that seem to not go together, but they actually deeply belong to each other. And when they do come together, they create the portrait of who I am. And I think these photos kind of have that same spirit.
I’d like to say that I took those photos, which are they’re self-portraits. And they’re photos that I took in my childhood home about 10 years ago with a camera and a tripod and a little self-timer. And I didn’t really know why I was taking those photos. I snuck in through my childhood bedroom window and made sure no one was home. And I disrobed and took these black and white photos of myself naked in different places of the house that had or where I had experienced trauma. And the part of me that’s optimistic says, ‘Oh Jonny, you were reclaiming those spaces for yourself’. You were bringing your own power into the spaces where you had no power, or you were powerless.
And, but if I’m really honest with myself, I think there’s a darker side to it too. Maybe, you know, I wonder why I, of all the places in the world, to be so vulnerable and, you know, to be naked, that I would go to the place of my abuser, the home of my abuser, and make myself so wildly vulnerable. Feels adjacent to Stockholm syndrome or something like that. Like why was I drawn to the place where I experienced so much suffering? And so that’s something that I’ll keep thinking about. And I don’t know if I’ll ever understand it. And it’s about maybe learning to be okay with that.
Are there any particular songs or even moments on the album that you’re especially excited for fans to hear?
Well, yeah, I think if I really survey the album, the part for me where I nearly cry every time I hear it, it’s two songs that are pretty short and they kind of flow into the next. The first is called “Harms”, which is that song of anger I was talking about where I’m just so I’m expressing this rage about being unloved and specifically about having a mother who didn’t love me as a child and the pain that comes with that and how that influences my choices and decisions and how I feel about myself throughout my life.
Even today I still encounter it and battle with it every day. And when that song ends, it sort of cascades into the next song, which is called “Little Jonny,” which is to me like the answer to anger. It’s a song where I am sort of speaking from a mother’s heart. And over the pandemic, I learned to sort of mother myself and I found this part inside of me that I call “Mama Jonny.” And she took such good care of me over the pandemic. And it’s her singing to the younger version of me and saying things, words of comfort and words of unconditional love and sweetness and tenderness. And it’s her saying she’s proud of me. And it’s a really touching moment on the album. And it’s part of what sets this album apart from all of the other albums I’ve made.
Looking back at your career with the drums, what have been some of the most defining moments or creative milestones for you? And how do they connect to the music you create today?
It’s really hard for me to look back and be really excited about anything that I’ve done in the past. I think making Portamento was really special. That’s when I sort of made the decision to start writing from my heart and leaving the escapism of the debut album. It’s also when I, in a way, came out and let the world know that I was not heterosexual. And so maybe that was the milestone for me. And I think that openness about myself really influences songwriting on the album. And I think it’s partly why so many people connect to Portamento. And I’m hoping that it would be the same sort of experience listening to the new album, Jonny, because I was in such an open-hearted, explorative space when I wrote it, which I can’t really say for Brutalism. So I guess we’ll just see what happens. But yeah, I think Portamento and then this album, they feel like, for me, the most impressive things that I’ve been able to pull off. As far as winning awards and being on all the lists and all that, which has happened with the band many times, all that stuff doesn’t mean too much to me. I’ve really decided that what’s important is that I honor my artist’s heart. And that’s it. You know, come what may.
All right, our final question for you. What are you most excited about in the future?
To be honest, usually when I’m done writing an album, I am so excited to not make music for a very long time. And I feel very differently now. Now that I found a beautiful way to write, one that keeps me centred and I get to stay in the space of self-exploration, I’m kind of addicted to this way of writing. And so I’m actually quite eager to get started on the next album. And I’m really interested to see what I will learn about myself in that process. So in a way, it’s a bit selfish because now when I write music, it’s like a therapy session for me. And I’m really going to deeper depths within myself and emerging with handfuls of gold that I kind of sprinkle throughout the music that I make.
