The Thermals
The Black Cat
Washington DC
March 2007
By Jillian Abbene
(SugarBuzz Wash DC/Richmond))
SugarBuzz Magazine
I’ve been waiting to see The Thermals for three years now. It seemed like something always came up. I also knew that within these three years, they have been gaining recognized momentum with the younger crowd as they pass on their unique style of power pop.
Winding the set up appropriately, Hutch, the lead vocalist, continuously strums one soft chord, while crooning out accapella lyrics—“God reached his hand down from the sky/he flooded the land, then he set it on fire/he said, ‘Fear me again, know I’m your Father/Remember that no one can breathe underwater…” With a split second pause, suddenly, simultaneous guitars, bass and drum slam chords as he shouts, “Here’s Your Future!” With lights flicked on, the band is now alive and bowling over the young smiling faces and sounding every bit as solid as their latest CD, ‘The Body, The Blood, The Machine.’
Craning his neck and leaning towards the microphone, Hutch is spilling out afflicted extreme nasal-in-tin similarities of Pete Shelley with a crooning lyric-meter style of Bob Dylan. This sounds odd reading this review, but if you listen to the CD you will understand that the rhyming meter along with pop-guitar creates a whole new sound altogether. Hutch’s vocals is piercing as dramatic back drop is added-- switching color lights to beats that only energizes in songs like, ‘How We Know,’ from their 2004 CD entitled, ‘Fuckin’ A,’ with mashed up sped up low production guitar and chopping beats that are made specifically for pogoing and jumping. Hutch’s long carried out verses against distort bass and tin-chords pulls the Thermals’ sound to its full potential. Rarely do I hear power pop hold longer scores in songs. Let me point out that this is really for the listeners’ advantage—that results in digesting the melody with lyric intent.
The audience understands.
The crowd is packed by the time they hit, ‘More Parts Per Million’ with rhyming odd lyrics and Kathy on bass jumping around with her sweet feistiness that dispels exuberance in her bobbing curls and dimples. She encourages the audience to nod along with her as the audience is in full dance mode and spills onto the sides of the venues. She succeeds as she adds, along with Hutch and Joel on guitars, fuzzed up notable squeals. ‘Back To The Sea’ was exceptional live as building power lands behind distorted yet quickened chords. One by one they threw out their personal bests, ‘Out Of The Old & Thin’, “No Culture Icons,’ and the new select, ‘Pillar of Salt.’ They push that power pop speed with that modern indie flair that deserves acknowledging as unsuspected substance.
Returning with an encore, ‘End To Begin,’ and ‘Back To Grey,’ ended the set with crowd adulation. Hutch thanks everyone for a great show and walks off along with the drummer and lead guitarist. However, Kathy stays and begins shaking the hands of the audience to front-row fawning. With her bass faced down, shrilly squeals and droning blasts are still weaving, leaving the audience with evidence even after they have left the scene.