Five Songs We Want At The Drive-In To Play On Their Aus Tour

With their first new album in 17 years set to drop next month, Texan icons At The Drive-In will hit Australia this September. Here's a handful of songs we hope make the cut.

One Armed Scissor

Remember the first time you heard this? Woah, this is tense. It’s like an angry lion that just barely got shoved back into a rickety cage, and now it’s pacing back and forth, snarling, salivating, rage collecting behind the eyes. What the hell is this guy talking about? Oxygen tanks and vacuums and eclipses and the Sputnik and cargo bays and HOLY SHIT THE CHORUS, THE CHORUS. The lion just got out again; everyone’s dead. What? A one armed scissor? Is that what you use to cultivate an MC-5 afro?

Arcarsenal

This should really be number one, except One-Armed Scissor is the one most of us heard first, and the one with which Cedric Bixler-Savala and co ripped Letterman’s wussy little late night show to shreds. Arcarsenal comes on like the group’s mission statement, its core values memo, its aural manifesto: We’re the angriest motherfucking maraca players this world will ever know, and rumour has it you people need new assholes! The hypnotic spiky guitar bits, the ropeable bass, the stopping, the starting, the recontextualised grand piano, and the bit that goes WAAARRRGGGHHHAAAGGHHHRGGHH!!!!

Pattern Against User

See, the earlier records failed to translate the Fugazian aggression fuelling At The Drive-In’s triumphant underground gigs. But here, Paul Hinojos’ pummelling bass pumps in sympathy with Tony Haijar’s drums like two pistons in a menacing machine. Meanwhile, Omar coaxes paranoid shrieks from a guitar while Cedric and Jim scream about suction cups and clocks and christ knows what else.

Rolodex Propaganda

Mostly because there’s a synthesizer and also Iggy Pop.

Cosmonaut

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