{"id":856493,"date":"2026-09-22T10:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T10:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/856493\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T10:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T10:30:10","slug":"the-drin-i-lost-my-way-for-centuries-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/856493\/","title":{"rendered":"The Drin: I Lost My Way for Centuries Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps it\u2019s just a strange coincidence that the leader of the Drin<\/a> bears a name that reads like a stage-alias mash-up of two of the most iconic artists of the 1960s. But while Dylan McCartney\u2019s band deploys a brand of sinister, post-industrial psych-rock that doesn\u2019t feel reverentially retro, his artistic ethos could best be described as a case of Dylan<\/a> vs. McCartney<\/a>: He\u2019s both the ragged raconteur gazing wearily out at our cruel world, and the ambitious, console-savvy alchemist seeking to transcend it.<\/p>\n

Since launching the Drin with a home-recorded cassette in the pandemic-clouded summer of 2020, McCartney has effectively built the project into a Buckeye State version of the Brian Jonestown Massacre<\/a>. His prolific rate of output mirrors Anton Newcombe\u2019s mid-\u201990s hot streak and occupies a similarly fluid position on the spectrum between jangle and drone, replacing BJM\u2019s California-cult aura with a hardened Rust Belt resilience. McCartney has since surrounded himself with a proper six-piece band, simultaneously sustaining membership in fellow Cincinnati-scene pillars the Serfs and Crime of Passing. But all the while, the Drin have stayed true to his original mandate, tapping a deep well of record-collector touchstones (from classic and kosmiche rock to post-punk and dub to goth and neofolk) and reanimating them with a contemporary sense of unease\u2014nostalgia as a gateway to dystopia.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

For an industrious artist like McCartney, a double album is less a dramatic level-up than an inevitability. Clocking in at 23 songs and 75 minutes, I Lost My Way for Centuries is certainly the Drin\u2019s most sprawling statement to date, but it\u2019s also the most accessible on-ramp into McCartney\u2019s psyche. And for such a wide-ranging record, there\u2019s remarkably little fat. They don\u2019t pad the tracklist with extended noise experiments or free-form jams; rather, each track functions as a challenge to work within compact pop-song parameters while still retaining the band\u2019s improvisatory, wandering spirit. McCartney\u2019s densely layered approach remains, but instead of plunging his melodies into a murky pool of doomy basslines, lo-tech electronics, and dubbed-out tape manipulations, he weaves thick tapestries from mostly organic instrumentation: guitars, drums, brass, shakers, and the occasional bouzouki.<\/p>\n

No matter what form the Drin take\u2014renaissance-faire folkies (\u201c…And They All Strummed\u201d), garage-quaking neanderthals (\u201cCannery Action\u201d), harmonica-honking Harvest<\/a> agrarians (\u201cMoths to the Light\u201d), motorik-powered space-rockers (\u201cThe Cell\u201d)\u2014McCartney\u2019s voice serves as the band\u2019s anchor, with a Sonic Boom<\/a>-schooled sing-speak that oozes attitude and ennui in equal measure. But if McCartney is the omnipresent main character, saxophonist Eric Dietrich is the Drin\u2019s resident scene stealer. In psych-punk contexts, the sax is often deployed as an agent of chaos<\/a>, but Dietrich wields his more subtly and seductively, gradually changing the vibe of a song even when every other element stays the same. \u201cThe Sky Has Lost the Smile\u201d may begin as an exercise in rock-history revisionism\u2014what if CCR<\/a> wrote \u201cI Wanna Be Your Dog\u201d?\u2014but Dietrich\u2019s heady horn lines launch it out of the swamp and toward the skies. And within the otherwise menacing fuzzed-out grind of \u201cProphets of Doom,\u201d he slips in snake-charmer melodies that expedite McCartney\u2019s Elias R\u00f8nnenfelt<\/a>-like transformation from goth misanthrope to swaggering rock star. When McCartney shouts, \u201cIt\u2019s not a mistake\/I was born too late\/It\u2019s just my fate,\u201d he conjures visions of Richard Ashcroft<\/a> in his untamed, barefoot, storm<\/a>-chasing days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Perhaps it\u2019s just a strange coincidence that the leader of the Drin bears a name that reads like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":856494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[776,88,216,777],"class_list":["post-856493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=856493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}