Drummer Appreciation Week: Dave Lovering

Rollicking Drum Maestro: Dave Lovering - The Pixies

Not only a member of one of the most important, influential and damnded impressive bands of all time, Dave Lovering is also a professional stage magician. Yes.

Dave Lovering

Ok, the whole magician thing came about after the original demise of the Pixies. Not for him though, kiddies birthday parties or the garish lights of Las Vegas, after all, he's Rock 'N' Roll, and as such his preferred venue was grimy clubs opening for bands such as The Breeders, Grant Lee Phillips and Frank Black & the Catholics.

But this isn't Magician Appreciation Week so lets move on to the real magic; his drumming.

Lovering is an impossibly tight stick-man. In fact, he's so good that you can't even hear his drumming.

What I mean by that, is that what he does fits in so extremely well and is so spot-on that his work feels interwoven into the very fabric of the song rather than sounding like he's playing along or accompanying the guitarists.

Every snappy fill, every rollicking drum roll, every snare crack and every cymbal splash is so precisely on the money that if you're not listening specifically to what he's doing you take it for granted. And if you do that you end up missing out on some mighty impressive drum work.

Mostly Lovering kept it simple - a trait not many drummers share - and often dropped right out of a song leaving an empty space that not only added an invaluable dynamic to many Pixies tracks but also served to remind just how empty the songs are without his shuffling beats.

A lot of the acclamied poppy sound of the Pixies can be attributed to Lovering's peppy drumming. His beats are imminently catchy and hook you into a song, but thery're also simultaneously very clever in many subtle and surprising ways.

A shining example of this is his work on the excellent track Tame off the no-possible-excuse-for-not-owning Doolittle album.

Like many Pixies songs this starts with Lovering; in this case a simple snare hit kicks off the song before Kim Deal's steadfast bass joins in immediately, leading the verse for a beat, before a menacing Black starts his demented whispering.

The effect is a queasy marriage of uneasiness and sing-along catchiness, which is made stronger by Lovering's shifting hi-hat timekeeping.

Constantly, and unnervingly, switching between the standard poppy 4/4 time and a more frantic double-time on the hi-hat whilst still keeping the actual beat the same Lovering produces a subtly uneasy feeling that, unless you know where it's coming from, is eerily unexplainable.

All this is achieved before the song hits its shriekingly fantastic desperate chorus.

So when Black is shredding his throat screaming "Taaaaame" repeatedly, Lovering shies away from whacking his cymbals to pieces and instead keeps a simple snare-heavy beat going. Again though, he shifts his rhythms around doing double hits on the snare, which to casual listeners will sound right but is in actuality slightly off, again adding to the disparate vibe of the song.

After the second chorus he drops out of the bridge completely, leaving the song wide open and exposed before adding a metronomic bass-kick and rejoining for the final howling chorus.

At this point it's worth noting that the song is 1:55 seconds long.

These kind of drumming techniques are all over every Pixies song, so it really is worth dusting them off, giving them a spin and listening properly to what Lovering is doing.

You'll gain a new respect for the intricate craftsmanship at work, not only in the band, but also for Lovering's often overlooked contribution to one of the greatest bands of all time.

In summing up; not only is Dave Lovering an immensely talented drummer and an accomplished stage magician, but he also sang lead vocals on my all-time favourite Pixies track La La Love You.

Really, what more can you say?