 | Tracklist:
1 One Horse Town
2 Whatever Happened to Corey Haim?
3 Big Sur
4 Santa Cruz (You're Not That Far)
5 Irish Keep Gate-Crashing
6 Hollywood Kids
7 Midnight Choir
8 Don't Steal Our Sun
9 Restaurant
10 Faded Beauty Queens
11 I Came All This Way
12 Not For All the Love in the World
13 Nothing Changes Around Here
14 Plans
Release Date: 08/01/2011 | |
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I’m treating this review as the eulogy The Thrills never got, and I’m also using it to lament the opportunity 2002-2007 misses to try for some remembrance. The fourteen songs here heartily celebrate The Thrills, but the problem is that being the band’s ringleader has made Conor Deasy a fatalist. Here’s their compilation, as overlooked as the albums it lifts from, collecting their singles- as if this band, more American than Irish when they had a single to sell, ever pretended to be more than a singles band- and just look at its name. 2002-2007. Named with such a resigned shrug that it’s a wonder they released it. You’d believe it was a cynical move for Euros or whatever if it wasn’t for that fucking title, a paradox if there ever was one, because it’s such a dispassionate move and yet if Deasy was trying to squeeze money out of the Thrills franchise, where’s his hype? This compilation was released five months ago and no one even knows it exists. Its Wikipedia references link to articles on the two years that open and bookend it. How stupid, and how telling: a barely compiled best of and a drummer’s solo album. The Thrills are dead and no one bothered to give them a bloody eulogy.
You’d think this says something of how these singles are now. But it’s not so: The Thrills were born dated. The way “Big Sur” went down in 2003 was flashy; it presented a band that sounded so much like a newly produced version of the Munkees that they said, well yeah, and wrote them a love letter. “Big Sur” was so much sunshine in one single, and I guess it’s an easy song to make when you’re the new thing. The music video, all beachside lounging, evoked pretty much the same thoughts Deasy had for eternal bliss. Four years later, the band was ever so casually dropped from EMI, and who even remembers “Big Sur” now? If anything, it’s a curse, the song that got them remembered as “that Munkees band.” And yet it’s still “Big Sur” of 2003 out of its meta context, and it still sounds unforgettable. It’s a burst of sunshine every time you hear it, certified to be the piece of ‘60s revival it was supposedly aiming to be. Me, I think it was just meant to make everyone smile. Of course 2002-2007 was never going to capture anyone’s imagination, and “Big Sur,” with its electric guitar vs. banjo surf-off, was a UK #17 hit that did everything to be sixteen places higher. The Thrills tried and tried, and I guess they don’t feel they need to at this point.
This speaks optimistically of 2002-2007, which represents The Thrills at their best on each of their records. On So Much For The City, Deasy is naively influenced and nothing more, the slow-jam of “Hollywood Kids” sweetly talking about places he probably never went. On Let’s Bottle Bohemia he’s tricked himself into thinking this sound was his all along, and so if he’s naively influenced, he’s only naively influenced by himself. “Whatever Happened to Corey Haim?” is “Big Sur” with synthesizers, but the disguise is stubborn. 2002-2007 is the example by which all best-ofs should be made, or rather it says that such compilations are for certain bands. Yes, it’s a routine to make a singles album, but only for The Thrills, a band who cherished specific songs, does it work so well. And maybe, in a weird way, the reason these guys faded away so fast was because they were modelling their career on that big, insanely memorable burst in “Big Sur.” In “Whatever Happened to Corey Haim,” The Thrills write themselves another little eulogy, referencing yet another big name tumbling by the waste-side. As long as The Thrills clung onto their favourite pop stars and their tragic icons, they were destined to be remembered for those names and not their own.
We’re forgetting Teenager, though, perhaps the band’s finest moment, and the one that arguably sealed their fate as strongly as those two annoying words do (“indefinite hiatus.” Sigh). Teenager was as close as Deasy got to writing a “concept” album, and it was written as if its lyrical cycles mattered as much as its music. On “Nothing Ever Changes Round Here,” the band kills a jig dead to let Deasy relapse into his teenage past. That speaks volumes about what The Thrills became on Teenager. Deasy was aiming to be as uncomfortable as the adolescent experience he was chasing. Here, The Thrills are sloppy, and intentionally so, as they step closer to a struggling Indie Rock we know and love, about burdens above and beyond love. The songs that star Teenager as special do so because they hint at a Thrills beyond “Big Sur” existing too- you can drop a band for writing a song as deliberately single-minded as the folksy lament “Restaurant,” but can you forget them for it?
And as brilliant as “Big Sur” is, and as brilliantly as every perfect single The Thrills wrote succeeded at being perfect, it’s Teenager’s “I Came All This Way” I always come out the other end with. The Thrills were always considered this fake-out Americana band, and lord knows they tried to perfect every little thing, much in the same way Fleet Foxes were curiously experts on their first record. It was probably the criticism we got over and over again: how can we believe Deasy is clueless in love if he’s not got the VISA for the accent he’s using? In “I Came All This Way,” I don’t care if there’s a pretence to The Thrills. To me, it’s this final, bitter declaration in a career that flailed out pathetically. It has its “no truth handler, you!” moment, spilling from verse to chorus like the quintet forgot all their formal training and wrote a song as sloppy as all their lovesick break-ups were said to be. The amount of times Deasy says “oh no” is bad structure. The high pitched refrains, the jangly solos and the slow contemplative bits, they’re all too much for one song. It’s a song built entirely to grab us, written so angrily, and hell, so passionately, and I like to think that’s why EMI dropped The Thrills. The band changed- just a little bit- and it energised them. Now, they don’t even have a catchphrase for their best-of, and “I Came All This Way” plays out like some tragically fitting farewell. If there ever was a meta signoff line for The Thrills, it was this song. “Now I know I’ll never be someone else / not for a long time!” If only someone actually listened, they’d know it was the truth. I guess this is goodbye to The Thrills. When they were perfect, they were perfect. It’s sad to think that they didn’t get to be something else.
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| Recent reviews by this author | | | |
not a review, just a complaint
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I loved this band so much.
Digging: Kate Miller-Heidke - Nightflight
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me too =(
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Yeah, I really liked The Thrills too. "Nothing Changes Around Here" has been on every playlist I've ever made for my iPod since it came out.
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just realized i have two thrills albums in my itunes...
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not for all the love in the worlddddddd
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now that's a lot of love
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knott for all the love in the worlddddddd
Digging: Rites of Thy Degringolade - Totalitys Commad Digging: Rites of Thy Degringolade - Totalitys Commad
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I'll get this =D
Brilliant review, Robin.
Digging: Between the Buried and Me - Colors Digging: Between the Buried and Me - Colors
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Damn, I didn't even know they had a third album. I'm checking this out now.
Digging: Keane - Strangeland Digging: Keane - Strangeland
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its not an album
Digging: Beach House - Bloom Digging: Beach House - Bloom
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I was talking about Teenager
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Ah man, this review has had me listening to these guys so much again the last few days, and it's legitimately making me depressed that they're not together anymore.
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I'm sorry to be the jerk in the room, but people actually remember this band? I had to YouTube "One Horse Town" - the only song title I recognized - before they came back to mind.
Just another product of the retro-rock fetish scene The Strokes brought to popularity.
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So yeah, apart from the fact they both have five people in the band and have "The" in their band name, what the fuck do the Strokes have to do with the Thrills?
That's what I thought.
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Not sure about this but you talked me into giving their LP's a shot. ;^)
Digging: Alabama Shakes - Alabama Shakes
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Teenager is incredible. Just getting into these guys.
Digging: Killer Mike - R.A.P. Music Digging: Killer Mike - R.A.P. Music
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Bohemia is the best one of the 3. All are good, though.
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bohemia is indeed really good. i love teenager so much but towards the end dealy does just give up writing lyrics and just repeats the same stuff over and over.
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