I love a weekender tour. It lets bands still get their music out to people and, you know, also have a life, maybe hold a job, maintain interpersonal relationships, etc. You know, the little things we do that don’t necessarily involve riffs and giant ride cymbals. Aussie doomers Adrift for Days are headed out this weekend in support of their soon-to-be-reviewed Come Midnight… sophomore album, and the following news came in on the PR wire about the shows (there’s one in August as well), which I’ve decided to post in no small part because I wish I was in Australia right now. It’s 52/11° in Melbourne, which sounds just about right to me.

Here’s the info:

Adrift for Days mini tour July 2012

Sydney psychedelic droners Adrift for Days are hitting Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney as part of a mini-tour in support of their new album Come Midnight…

On Come Midnight… Adrift for Days have retained the smoky, psychedelic heaviness that they’ve become known for, while also ambitiously expanding their sound. This sprawling album incorporates elements of doom, drone, stoner, sludge, blues, ambience, psychedelic rock, and post-metal. As a result, the album as a whole is hard to pin down to a single style or genre.

Their latest meditation is an ambitious, 71-minute concept album that draws influence from Earth, Jimi Hendrix, YOB, The Doors, Neurosis, Pink Floyd, Rosetta and Boris — and is currently streaming in full over at Art as Catharsis.

Be sure to catch Australia’s psychedelic droning doom giants when they hit your town!

Adrift for Days mini tour July 2012

Melbourne: 13 July at John Curtin Hotel: Mushroom Giant, Adrift for Days (NSW), Spider Goat Canyon, Roussemoff.
Adelaide: 14 July at Enigma Bar: Space Bong, Adrift for Days (NSW), Hydromedusa, Leather Messiah.
Sydney: 10 August at The Lansdowne Hotel: Space Bong (SA), Adrift for Days, Summonus, We Lost the Sea.

My fascination with Aussie stoner and doom continues with the discovery of Adrift for Days, an unsigned doom/psychedelic blues five-piece from Sydney, whose debut album, The Lunar Maria, was released in August. The album is reportedly seven tracks/71 minutes long, and if the couple of songs the band has posted on their MySpace are any indication, it’s no small wonder. “Bury all That’s Chosen” alone is over 15 minutes, and it hardly feels like the band are stretching it on purpose to hit that mark. Seems like business as usual, in other words.

Going by “Bury all That’s Chosen” and the much shorter “The Leech” (a meager 4:59), what Adrift for Days excel at are the quiet, creepy moments of doom, the lone guitar ba-domp, ba-domps. They get a lot of their bluesy feel from that, Ron Prince and the aptly-monikered Lachlan R. Doomsdale handling riffs and solos throughout while the well-balanced bass of Matt Williams — I always feel like the bass never makes it through MySpace‘s audio compression, so to actually hear it is nice — and drums of Steve Kachoyan provide solid rhythmic foundation.

Mick Kaslik‘s vocals have some of that Anselmo/Down “hey whoa momma yeah” inflection that an entire generation of heavy singers seems to have adopted, but he changes it up on “Bury all That’s Chosen” with some Al Cisneros-style monotone that offsets the rest of the song well, and on “The Leech” there’s even a couple screams layered in, so he’s by no means limited to one approach.

Adrift for Days could just as easily be from Maryland as Australia, and with lumbering grooves and a capable showing of melody, they’ve managed to make a good case with these two tracks for keeping them on the radar. I’m sure they also made a few friends this past weekend when they played with Acid King, Pod People and others at the Doomsday Festival in their hometown, and I can only say I wish I’d been there to see it. Doom on, gentlemen.