In Stores Now: Now We Can See by the Thermals

Illustration from Old Moore's Almanack, 1910

I've seen the Thermals perform live twice. The first time, they were the opening act for the All Girl Summer Fun Band at a tiny, under-attended show. The Thermals first record, More Parts Per Million had just come out, and I think they played every song from it. The set lasted about 20 minutes. Afterward, singer Hutch Harris sold me an album he and his bassist/girlfriend Kathy Foster had recorded together at home prior to the (also home-recorded) Thermals debut. Entitled Hutch & Kathy, he described it as a "Simon & Garfunkel sort of thing." I didn't buy the debut of Hutch's punkier Thermals until a year later. By the time I saw them a second time, this time as the opening act on the final Guided By Voices tour, they had a second album out and could still somehow play every song they know in under half an hour.

The Thermals have just released their fourth album, Now We Can See, and it's almost shocking how far they have moved from the trashy DIY punk-pop of their debut. You can tell that this one was not recorded at a total cost of $10, but the Thermals have lost none of their engaging energy - they just focus it in a cleaner power-pop direction now. Thermals albums have always been about "an issue", the first three having been about the modern music scene, US politics, and the role of religion, respectively. Now We Can See is about death, a set of songs about life sung from the point of view of a dead person. It's hard to miss the theme when the first four songs are called "When I Died", "We Were Sick", "I Let It Go", and "Now We Can See". The progression is pretty clear, and Harris and Foster (the only musicians who play on the record) sing about life's regrets, the fear of (and embrace of) oblivion, shifting perspectives, and acceptance of change. The theme is not always as compelling as the religion-oriented material of their last album The Body The Blood The Machine, and there is no single song as good as that album's "Return to the Fold", but Now We Can See is easily their most consistent and hook-oriented work to date.

A few new ingredients are introduced this time around, the best being Kathy Foster's vocals, which work so well in combination with Hutch's elastic yelping. "We Were Sick" and "Now We Can See" make particularly good use of her backing vocals, and they provide a nice counterpoint for the times when Hutch's voice is front and center. The album has plenty fully-formed pop songs ("Now We Can See"), GBV-esque sketches ("Liquid In, Liquid Out"), and even an atmospheric epic ("At the Bottom of the Sea"). My favorite song on the record may be "You Dissolve" - it features excellent cymbal-heavy drumming by Foster and a staccato piano riff that is one of the album's many power-pop touchpoints. Foster also joins in on the vocals of the final chorus, happily singing about the final dissolution of the soul. What a way to die.

"You Dissolve" by the Thermals