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Failure to deliver - predictions
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Dog 3000
Dog 3000
4611 posts

Quick Review #2: Thursday
Feb 04, 2004, 17:37
Listened to: "This Sadness Alone", "Paris in Flames", "Signals Over The Air", "The Dream", "Jet Black New Year" and "Understanding in a Car Crash" by Thursday -- annointed as "the Next Big Thing" in the current issue of SPIN. These songs were chosen because they were the most popular on WinMX (a lot of songs cuz apparently this band is popular!)

Thursday is a five-piece band: 2 guitars-bass-drums + singer (who happens to be a cute boy.)

Let's start with the music: a varied bunch of guitar rock with a high radio-friendly quotient. They seem to be channeling 60's-70's classic rock through the indie scene of the 1980's. Echos of all kinds of stuff: Dinosaur jr, Soul Asylum, The Cure, Soundgarden, Mission of Burma, Fugazi, the James Gang! Good taste & chops, but I think they're wearing the record collections on their sleeves a bit much.

The singer: under the influence of Robert Smith! Otherwise doesn't have much of a recognizable individual style.

The songs: "Jet Black New Year" was the one I liked best -- sort of like Mars Volta with less wank and more crank. "Paris in Flames" has some nice jammy classic rock crunch -- but I swear I've heard these riffs before! That's the whole problem here though: they have no real individual style, there are just recycling and reshuffling stuff from hundreds of other records.

The cover: I think Thursday might be classified as "emo" though of course no band seems to want that label. Actually I would much rather hear Thursday on the pop charts than a lot of the even more prefab junk that's already there. This is above average "classic rock" for the radio. Tasty and disposable like a Big Mac!

The Unsung Competition: makes me think of how much better Ted Leo is! His current group is "& the Pharmacists" (they had a minor hit with "Where Have All The Rudeboys Gone?" last year), he used to be in an even better group called Chisel. His brother Chris Leo has also been in some good bands, including The Lapse (which also featured the ex-bassist from Blonde Redhead.) Chisel and The Lapse are certainly bands that have more of an individual style -- you can recognize a Ted Leo tune as soon as you hear a few bars.

Next: Interpol
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Re: SPIN's kiss of death for 2004 (Dog 3000)
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