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The Thermals are back album #7, and the question for many fans remains: “Is it as good as The Body The Blood The Machine”?
Which is unfair, maybe, but it’s a common problem for any band that makes a defining, landmark album then has to spend the rest of their career in its shadow. That said, Thermals leader Hutch Harris doesn’t seem to be losing sleep over it. And it’s not like their post-TBTBTM output has been awful. For my money, Now We Can See and Desperate Ground are underappreciated gems, and while Personal Life didn’t quite work for me, there’s still some good stuff there.
The new album, We Disappear, is thematically concerned with how people resist the end of things, be they relationships or life itself to the point of posting everything about themselves online in a possible bid for immortality after we die, as the opening track declares.
Musically, it’s also a step forward in that The Thermals expand their sound slightly – it’s still simple three-chord power-pop with Harris’ earnest yelp, but with more layered guitars and judicious use of echo on a few tracks.
That said, it’s still basically the standard Thermals template, and that’s why – as with the last few albums – I’ll need to revisit it a few times. But history suggests this one will grow on me.
We will always exist,
This is dF
Which is unfair, maybe, but it’s a common problem for any band that makes a defining, landmark album then has to spend the rest of their career in its shadow. That said, Thermals leader Hutch Harris doesn’t seem to be losing sleep over it. And it’s not like their post-TBTBTM output has been awful. For my money, Now We Can See and Desperate Ground are underappreciated gems, and while Personal Life didn’t quite work for me, there’s still some good stuff there.
The new album, We Disappear, is thematically concerned with how people resist the end of things, be they relationships or life itself to the point of posting everything about themselves online in a possible bid for immortality after we die, as the opening track declares.
Musically, it’s also a step forward in that The Thermals expand their sound slightly – it’s still simple three-chord power-pop with Harris’ earnest yelp, but with more layered guitars and judicious use of echo on a few tracks.
That said, it’s still basically the standard Thermals template, and that’s why – as with the last few albums – I’ll need to revisit it a few times. But history suggests this one will grow on me.
We will always exist,
This is dF
