The Drin's 'I Lost My Way For Centuries' Is a 75-Minute Attic Epic That Never Loses the Thread
A 23-track, 75-minute psych record recorded in an attic should be a cautionary tale. Instead it is the best thing Dylan McCartney’s Cincinnati band has done, and every outlet that has written about it says so.
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: The bass is the tour guide across four sides. Sun 13’s Simon Kirk pointed to “Switched on Solar Lightning” — “a humming bass line, cutting through the kind of dark valley blues like a flashing blade” — and called it the song “you can no longer live without.” The Fire Note heard the same track “lock into a motorik pulse while everything around it feels increasingly unstable.”
The Spatial Dynamics: The Fire Note’s Thomas Wilde catalogued the palette: “Bouzouki, 12-string acoustic, saxophone, harmonica, synthesizers, and layers of electric guitar keep moving in and out of the slow-to-mid-tempo haze, giving nearly every song its own strange little corner to explore.” The band produced it themselves, and the attic is audible in the best way — close, dry, and full of edges.
Standout Performance
The saxophone, whoever’s holding it. Bandcamp Daily’s Martin Douglas mapped the record’s range through “the driving garage rock-meets-Madchester backbeat of ‘That Kind of Water,’ the outlaw-country cool of ‘Take This and Don’t Forget,’ and the space-blues of ‘Haven’t Lived it Yet,’” and the horn threads through all three registers.
Why It’s Certified
Because it earns its length. Sun 13: “Not only is the band’s longest, but also their most dynamic and, undoubtedly, their best.” The Fire Note, 4.5 out of 5: “a fantastic put-on-your-headphones album where you can just let the grooves take over… a record that finds them completely focused and sounding more mature as a band, while creating their best album yet.”
Start at “The Sky Has Lost the Smile.” Do not skip.