Album: The Thermals / Now We Can See

Artist: The Thermals

Album: Now We Can See

A cracker of an album. On their fourth full-lengther, the Portland duo get even a little more pop in outlook and in the clean production. But there's enough DIY in the bleat of Hutch Harris' vox and in the unswept corners of these songs to keep it from feeling oversanitized. Continuing from the band's earlier works, the jaunty music is a spoonful of sugar to go with an intense existential concern, and a fear of apocalypses both personal and otherwise. As an experiment, I made a word cloud of this album's lyrics:

Almost as expected, "sick" and "never" are the first things popping out at your eyes, "nothing" and "dissolve" almost as prominent — but "love" and "need" are just hanging just back, waiting for their moment. I think that captures things reasonably well.

Track Picks: 4 - "Now We Can See", 7 - "I Called Out Your Name"