After releasing popular self-titled debut last year and riding the hype wave of their ultra-peppy single, Lets Go Surfing, things started to go south for the Drums. Their guitarist acrimoniously left the band. Lead singer Jonathan Pierce started telling media outlets that after a lot of shouting matches, the band was close to breaking up altogether. Instead, they somehow stuck it out and recorded their second LP, the symbolically-titled Portamentoan Italian musical term denoting the movement from one note to the next. The songs of Portamento swell with a range of turbulent emotions. Its first single, the quick-moving, addictive Money, sounds even perkier than Surfing, but its second, How It Ended, is more representative of the whole albuma bit downtrodden, like a sad reflection of an emotional upheaval. With Veronica Falls, io echo. ERIN K. THOMPSON
Wed., Oct. 12, 8 p.m., 2011