The Drin have been the leading lights from a Cincinnati scene that has basically used the ’80s Australian underground as their their mission statement to thrive. That kind acerbic post-punk that kept the world at arm’s length.
What started out as Dylan McCartney’s brainchild has slowly evolved into the kind of organic, communal wanderings that teleport you back in time. As McCartney shares on Prophets of Doom, one of the many highlights from The Drin’s fifth LP, I Lost My Way for Centuries, “It’s not a mistake / I was born to live / It’s just my thing”. Delivered with slacker conviction, it’s quite the admission.
Joined by Eric Dietrich, Dakota Carlyle, Ryan Sennett, Luke Cornett and Cole Gilfilen, on I Lost My Way for Centuries, McCartney orchestrates an album of great scope. Not only is the band’s longest, but also their most dynamic and, undoubtedly, their best.
I Lost My Way for Centuries is one of those albums that lands differently every time it meets the ear. Think of those albums you hear when you walk into a record store but can never quite place. That moment is this, and when it arrives, you can’t live without it. Yes, there’s still some of that Total Control worship (The Cell), but by and large, I Lost My Way for Centuries offers the greatest possibilities of all. A soundtrack to rock ’n’ roll as we know it.
So far this year, Ty Segall and White Fence have rolled back the years by re-imagining the ’70s (Segall leaning into hard-rock; Tim Presley through the lens of psychedelia), but The Drin feel a little more untethered. There’s something nomadic about McCartney’s songs. Something woodsy, gothic and outlaw.
It starts with The Sky Has Lost the Smile. All brittle guitars and worn bass lines, as McCartney’s abstract meanderings come back to one thing: sacred love. And with a fading saxophone sounding like it’s delivered from another planet, it’s this kind of mystical folk that later reveals itself even more (Forfeit My Will).
The Drin - I Lost My Way For CenturiesIn-between, it’s a smorgasbord of songcraft of the upper echelon. The jangle folk of Moths to the Light Fragile, like a gnarled echo from Dylan’s Time Out of Mind. (“You left me hanging’ / On the side of the road / At the Devil’s corner / With nowhere to go”.) It’s these slower, downer laments that are the pillars of the album. The Port, Cannery Action and I’m Not the Door, like post-punk hissing through the campfire flames.
As they do throughout these 23 songs, The Drin constantly pivot. The urgent psych-rock Fatal Charade and Lost My Way For Centuries, trip-wire post-punk where the band break the shackles. (Or in McCartney’s words on the former “cut the throat of destiny.”)
Not before a lengthy jaunt through the decades. Come and See is a ghoulish take on Their Satanic Majesty’s Request, while the glam echoes of Bozo Theatre continues to lift The Drin into new orbits; the song, about not letting love fuck you up. (“Now don’t you end up crying / Over a heart that gave up on its trying,”) They All Strummed is cut from the same cloth, too. And as McCartney sings, “I am here waiting / Lost in time”, it’s Lou Reed-inspired, both in sound and theme.
Elsewhere, and the underground hits keep coming. As soon as you hear Switched on Solar Lightning, it’s a song you can no longer live without. A humming bass line, cutting through the kind of dark valley blues like a flashing blade. So good, it’s the song Jefferson Airplane never wrote.
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Under Magnolia just about rivals it, albeit through vastly different aesthetics. The kind of wandering punk blues to accompany the better end of an acid trip, as The Drin, channel their inner Planet Caravan. It begs the question: are you listening in this world or another?
Eventually its residue reaches the whimsical finale, It Will Call Me in Some Time. The ringing 12 string guitar, summoning the listener towards the hash den. “It will call me in some time,” sings McCartney, and perhaps a truer verse on the record isn’t spoken until its very end.
While there are so many twists and turns on I Lost My Way for Centuries, on the likes of Body Double and That Kind of Water, it’s clear that The Drin really embody an Exile… spirit. There’s a recorded-on-the run atmosphere permeating through the album, but not because The Drin are considered outlaws. It’s because of the mere circumstances of the world. Is getting 23 songs down for an album the most punk thing a band could do in 2026? It probably is.
“The days still stab me in the corners of my soul… I’m counting every second as if it’s my last,” sings McCartney on the That Kind of Water. While it’s Exile… in soul there’s a poetic Jim Morrison thing going on, too. And make no mistake, I Lost My Way for Centuries feels just as timeless, but in the sense that The Drin don’t actually give a fuck about time. This is a record that the next generation 30 years on will write essays about. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, that’s the kind of power and potential this album possesses.
I Lost My Way for Centuries is out via Feel It Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.
