The Drums

Somewhere inside of all of us, there's a place where our deepest hurts forever cry out to be soothed. The way people failed us as children, the jagged cliffs we stumbled down when we went looking for fertile fields -- they stay with us, singing through the body long after the initial shock. It can feel easier to sideline that hurt, to wrap it up and set it aside and try to get on with life. But life only reveals itself through healing, and healing only comes when we pore over the heaviest loads we carry. It takes courage to dive in, and patience and gentleness and tenderness, but it's lifesaving. It opens the world. On his latest album as The Drums, New York-based indie pop artist Jonny Pierce plunges into the work of healing from childhood trauma and the long shadow it casts over adulthood. The sparkling, eponymous Jonny unfurls a love letter to a galaxy of younger selves, all hungry to be nourished, all rejoicing now that they finally get to belong. The songs on Jonny emerged out of a radically new way of writing for Pierce. On past Drums albums, he'd prided himself on his stark efficiency. "I could just get in front of my computer for two minutes with a guitar and bang out a track," he says. "A lot of my self-worth was built into that." But as he began exploring a different way of relating to himself in therapy, his relationship to his art shifted, too. Everything slowed, letting new and delicate shapes come to light.