The Thermals – Now We Can See
The Thermals’ 2006 apocalyptic epic The Body, The Blood, The Machine was a triumph of minimalism – rock music at its most primal and basic, with memorable tunes and a tightly framed underlying concept. Quite frankly, given the band’s previous material – it was unprecedented. I will not deny the infectiousness and energy of More Parts Per Million and Fuckin A, but neither seemed terribly focused or ambitious: They weren’t meant to be – they were just… fun. 2009’s Now We Can See is the calm after the storm, and a reminder that, before people started listening, The Thermals were just another lively pseudo-punk band.
Many critics will claim, both as praise and censure, that Now We Can See is the group at their most tame. Indeed, interviews in which bandleader Hutch Harris has dropped potentially terrifying album descriptors such as “less abrasive,” “universal,” and “classic,” suggest that reaching a larger audience is very much a part of his agenda. The fact that the band shopped around for a new label to release Now We Can See seems to indicate an awareness of their sudden marketability following the huge success of their previous album (for those out of the loop, Hutch and Co. decided to sign on with Kill Rock Stars after completing their contract with Sub Pop.)
Don’t let any of the press fool you – All things considered, NWCS sounds exactly like you would expect it to. Envision an entire album of songs that borrow heavily from The Body’s “Returning to the Fold”, for starters. Lyrically, there’s a lot of death, love, and fish. Remember “Back to the Sea” and the promise that the narrator will willfully de-evolve and disappear into the ocean? Well, this is it, and apparently there’s not much to do or write about down there.
Opener “When We Died” is good enough, featuring some delightfully gross lyrical imagery (“I took off my clothes/ I took off my skin/ started shedding my arms to start getting my fins…”), but it does not leave much room for further thematic exploration. Harris’ lyrics, glorious in their simplicity, were the obvious driving force of The Body, The Blood, The Machine – but in this record, the content of the first song dooms the rest: Our narrator says everything he needs to within the first 3 minutes.
So here we have a collection of songs that is – for the most part – more of the same. There is no huge departure, nor have the Thermals quite “settled down”, as some have theorized from the oddly serene cover art. What they have done is tweek the most “universal” elements of their music and shone a light on them that is so bright it is nearly blinding. And now we can see.HH
