The Sky Drops are gaze-grunge duo Rob Montejo, founding member of the ’90s American Shoegaze band Smashing Orange, and Monika Bullette. Monika plays drums and sings.
This Delaware twosome unearths an ocean-size sound — a super force of guitar, drums, and vocals.
- “i fucking LOVE it” – Kramer
2 EPs and one album
Many east coast tours, Austin Psych Fest 4 at Seaholm Power Plant, two US west coast tours, several dates in London, England, Helen Leicht’s WXPN’s Pick of the Day 9″Wilmington natives, The Sky Drops with their psychedelic rhythm and indie lyrics. Rob and Monika have a new White Stripes meets the Pixies meets Elliott Smith-like vibe.” )
Played alongside the Black Angels, Cold War Kids, the Dirty Projectors, Ringo Deathstar, A Place To Bury Strangers, Wye Oak, Ceremony, Spindrift, and more
The Sky Rises
Delaware duo The Sky Drops make a case for “gaze-grunge.”
by John Vettese
Published: Jan 5, 2010
In a way, playing the Khyber tomorrow night is a trip full circle for Rob Montejo.
His band, The Sky Drops, is sharing the bill with Adam Franklin, late of shoegaze staples Swervedriver. Likewise, Montejo’s own roots lie in blissful noisepop; his first band, Smashing Orange, was Wilmington’s early-’90s answer to the U.K. tidal wave of Lush, Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine.
It was an exciting time, Montejo says, but “I had a lot of ideas of how the band should sound, and more often than not, I was at odds with myself.”
He dug the overdrive and atmospherics he heard in the British scene, but was simultaneously drawn to the unconventional rock being explored on our own Northwestern shores. His next group, Love American Style, played along more to that alterna-rock sound. Still, Montejo sought a balance.
“The Sky Drops, I think, is the closest I’ve gotten to how I originally envisioned my music,” he says.
Last summer the duo self-released their debut, Bourgeois Beat, but the partnership extends back to The Secrets, a 2005 solo Internet release by drummer Monika Bullette (named “Best Album You Can Get for Free and Without a Guilty Conscience” in our CP Choice Awards that fall). She wanted a very specific sound, ethereal yet aggressive, on the song “We Are Not from Sugar,” and figured Montejo would be the best producer to work with.
“I had seen Rob’s bands for many years before I approached him, so I knew what his aesthetic was,” Bullette says. “Plus the Delaware scene is small — it’s easy to know people.”
Production work on “Sugar” went so well that Montejo and Bullette decided to continue collaborating. By the next summer, The Sky Drops had completed their debut EP, Clouds of People, and begun booking gigs around the tri-state area.
Performing as a duo came about by happenstance. Their first practice was supposed to include a bassist, but he flaked and the two kept going without him. Turns out they didn’t really need a third — Montejo’s rich, textured guitar engulfs enough space on its own, and Bullette’s vocal counterpoint is an added dimension. Opening track “Heavy Penny” is a perfect specimen of the deceptively dense sound The Sky Drops pull off; the guitar is fierce and rumbling, the drums thumping, the harmonies piercing. And short of a minor accent track of guitar overdubs, this is nothing more than the duo, hard at work.
“Part of the premise of The Sky Drops is if we can’t perform it live, we’re not going to embellish a song with it,” Montejo explains of the lack of more pronounced double- and triple-tracking on their records.
“We’ve actually had bassists approach us after shows, asking to join the band,” Bullette laughs. “But we’re very streamlined. We wouldn’t want to change that.”
They’ve been touting the self-coined “gaze-grunge” genre to sell The Sky Drops’ minimalist noisemaking, a dubious term to be sure. Grunge and shoegaze were very specific scenes responsible for a plethora of acolytes in their day, not all of whom have aged well. Call Montejo the rare example of the older/wiser devotee, since he and Bullette have managed to channel the strengths of two somewhat dated scenes, while avoiding the trappings that kept those scenes from evolving.
Check out “Sentimental” for a killer tremolo guitar effect mixed with a tremendous economy of arrangement: Montejo vigorously strums and pitch-bends for a couple quick bars, then breaks away from the effects pedal haze to let Bullette continue the beat with spare hi-hat hits.
Alongside its killer riff, “Long Way” is driven by minor-key harmonies that, in the hands of Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell, might have come off strung-out and morose. Here, they feel sublime.
Most notably, The Sky Drops escape one of the easiest criticisms of both shoegaze and grunge by not milking their noise and atmospherics to avoid the more difficult work of writing. See “Hang On,” a tune that opens with the peel of an arpeggiated chord in total Neil Halstead style and goes on to exhibit spellbinding drone. At its core it remains a life-affirming plea to those struggling with addictions and dark nights of the soul — “The sky took you flying, but it’s lonely above/ Let me carry you.” Strip away the stylizations and sonic effects, and the song remains every bit as powerful.
“We’re not interested in masking vocals, or even worse, making a song that doesn’t exist,” Montejo says. “We have songs.”