The Drones Play The Tivoli In Brisbane Australian band The Drones play Brisbane on April 12 to support their new record "I See Seaweed." For singer/songwriter Gareth Liddiard, the writing process takes a while to reboot. "Initially it's just garbage, really," admits the frontman for the Drones, currently touring the country in support of their new album, I See Seaweed. Liddiard set aside eight weeks last year to start writing again, after a good break for the Drones since 2008's Havilah, and his own 2010 solo project Strange Tourist. "It's like any kind of athletic endeavour, if you have a break from doing it, you become pissweak really, and when you get back into it you've got to basically build up those muscles again," he says. "When you start it's just embarrassing, it's the worst angsty teenage garbage you've ever heard," he laughs. Liddiard says the good thing about computers is that it that they allow his unwanted lyrics to be killed off. I just delete them, so no one will ever know. What he has kept, however, are eight complex and poetic songs, full of mood, regret, memory and layered meaning. But it's also noisy, bluesy rock. "We just got bored of acoustics, really, so that sort of explains the smash bang wallop of it all," Liddiard laughs. We were trying to do something weird. That extended to the recording process itself, which was done at Liddiard and bass player partner Fiona Kitschin's rural property in central Victoria. "The first two or three months was literally building the studio we were going to record in," he says of buying and renovating an old school demountable building. We really bit off more than we could chew, and chewed like crazy. But the contrast between creativity and construction contributed to what Liddiard describes as a "waking dream" feel to the album. Dreams are weird, they're full of things like grief, sexual urges, violence, and things like flying, impossible things, stuff that's the result of the most base drives and motivations. Dreams are irrational and they don't make any sense, but it's not like they don't move you. The Drones themselves had a dream come true earlier this year, playing with Neil Young on his recent tour. "For a couple of weeks we were hanging around with dudes who hung out with Hendrix - it was completely wild," he says. We've worked with a lot of cool people, but that's top shelf. The Drones play The Tivoli on Friday, April 12. Tickets $43.50 available through Ticketek.