the thermals: stereo: glasgow
so contrary bugger that i am i had a last minute change of heart and chose to go see the thermals instead of throbbing gristle. not much of a difference… maybe it was the ticket price, the overindulgence of noise recently, the fact i have an embarrassing crush on kathy foster, the need for thrashed out tunes, the fact that peter christopherson’s threshold houseboys choir show was so bloody good. i dunno. i was heading to the tramway. and then i wasn’t.
if it was awesome tell me. je ne regrette rien.
a reminder anyway, proof, if proof were needed, that three people, two guitars and minimal drum setup can still create a glorious wild wired racket, with fingers full of chords, a way with words and a gutbusting amount of ooomph and feverish zeal.
so we got the many highlights from the body, the blood, the machine and a bunch of songs off the new john congelton produced record now we can see. there may even have been some unpolished old school garage-punk thermals gems (did i hear it’s trivia? or no culture icons? maybe…) but the whole set was such a mad fucking rush (in both senses of the word) that i forget.
deceptively simple. their economy is part of their genius. like the ramones first four albums, you get a succesive refining of ideas from the previous record. the new one probably won’t catch fire the way the body… did, it’s not as immediate or apocalyptic, there’s certainly more of a sheen to it, more restrained, more reflective, more like a sequel to the semi-conceptual religio-fascist floods and locusts of the last one:
“they’ll pound you with the love of jesus”
the new one’s all living in the aftermath kindof thing, chockfull of death and change and rebirth and transformation:
“i looked my fear in the eye, i looked at the water below, i knew i could love or die, i let it go, i let it go”
like ted leo’s escape from the limiting confines of punk (if you collect labels and punk still means anything to you) into something spiritually equal but less constraining. and live, like ted leo, it’s a whole big wave of adrenaline from start to finish. vocals as linguistically rhythmic and propulsive as the drums and bass, spewing words overandover, the fizz and fear of modern life, guitar hooks coiled and springing like coiled springey things, melodies like nicotine (without the nasty brown hangover).
anyway when you can toss out songs as fucking perfect as a pillar of salt or here’s to your future (and bands go whole careers without writing anything as wonderful) whenever you feel like in yr live show and not look back yr doing something right.
fast and bulbous, tight also. so said the good captain (beefheart). i’ll add euphoric and ecstatic, cathartic also. looking forward to when we won’t have to apologise for our dirty god, our dirty bodies. yup.
here’s a retina-worrying video (so they did play it’s trivia) from some other shaky bugger…
