The Thermals

I read a pretty favorable review of The Thermals' fourth album Now We Can See, in the April edition of Spin, so I decided to download it. It proved to be a catchy, foot-stompin' bukkake of garage rock, power pop, and some punk. Unfortunately, I later heard that the title track was featured on an episode of Chuck, which probably makes them less cool, but forget I brought that up. A few days later, I saw that they were playing the High Noon Saloon here in Madison, so I picked up a ticket.



The concert was on a Tuesday night, so I stayed sober, I went alone because all my music loving friends have left town, and I was a little grossed out because the basist was wearing a sleveless shirt and she clearly had not shaved her armpits in a long while, but it was still one of the more enjoyable shows I can recall seeing. A few songs into their set, the crowd, strongly consisting of indie and hipster kids, really got into it. Oddly enough, the soft-core moshing began to break out during "Test Pattern", a slower tune from their 2006 album The Body, The Blood, The Machine. It was great to be a part of that kind of energy without the real threat of getting the shit kicked out of me like at Rage's Lollapalooza show last summer. From that point on, the trio (Hutch Harris on vocals and guitar, Kathy Foster on bass, and drummer of the week Westin Glass) from Portland, OR blasted through a solid setlist, including the more memorable "A Pillar Of Salt," "Returning To The Fold," "Here's Your Future (this was apparently featured on Weeds and turns out to be a great song to hurl your body into another human being to)," "No Culture Icons," "When I Was Afraid," and the slightly slower, less frantic cut off the new one "How We Fade."

Before you start listening to them, I'd like to point out that some of their lyrics contain religious references. Don't let that scare you into thinking they are a Christian band. They use these references to criticize Christian facism. I'll not comment on the state of the church but, musically speaking, protest songs are generally way better than songs of praise. I mean Creed really sucks and I think these guys are pretty rockin'.



This is the only video for "Here's Your Future" I could find that didn't have terrible sound quality.