| The Thermals let nothing go to waste.
As tight a three piece as you are likely to find, this band from Portland, Oregon spent almost no time or money getting a record deal. Their home-recorded debut More Parts Per Million, was pretty much taken as is by Sub Pop records when Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard brought it to the label’s attention. The band was signed to the super-indie label having only played 10 shows.
This album typifies The Thermals thrifty yet aggressive tendencies. It’s surprising enough that their video for "No Culture Icons" (which is really four videos in one) was made for a mere $2,000, but it has also been rumoured that making More Parts Per Million cost approximately $60.
"It cost less to make, actually," says Harris, calculating the recording budget. "You can buy a tape for a dollar and put four Thermals-length songs on it. So there were about 10 cassettes used so (the cost) is closer to $10."
The resulting lo-fi masterwork was released in 2003 to widely ranging opinion. Some (myself included) found the manic abandon of their songwriting mixed with nominal tape hiss charming. Others are on record as saying the sound quality was "piss poor."
"It sounded like it was recorded by drunk teenagers in a garbage can," says guitarist-vocalist Hutch Harris, quoting some of the negative press from the first album. According to him those criticisms are accurate, but that doesn’t mean that the album isn’t any good.
"It was accidental at first, but once I got the results of that first song, I loved the way it sounded," he says. "At first I didn’t know what it would sound like, playing everything on the four-track so fucking loud. I wasn’t listening to anything back on speakers, I was just listening to it on headphones, so I really didn’t have a picture of what it would sound like until it was finished… I loved it. It was so intense. So we just stayed in that mode for the whole record."
Not only was that album strong enough to land Harris a record deal, it effectively helped him form the band. Harris had been playing in a folk-pop outfit appropriately named Hutch and Kathy with The All Girl Summer Fun Band bassist Kathy Foster. She liked the early recordings so much that she wanted to join and they enlisted Jordan Hudson as their drummer.
A year has passed since More Parts Per Million and The Thermals have returned with a followup – the explosive Fuckin’ A. A raw explosion of sound, the album was a departure for the band for several reasons. Upgrading from a living room four-track recorder to an actual studio. The album, recorded in four days, features a working band as opposed to three people playing Harris’s songs. Re-teaming with Chris Walla (also of Death Cab For Cutie), who helped with the final mix of More Parts Per Million, The Thermals now quash all the lo-fi complaints without blowing the budget.
"We spent more on food on the first day than we did on recording the first record," Harris says. "It was made for a couple grand so it’s still good and cheap."
The economy doesn’t end there. Take the leadoff track "Our Trip," for example. A two-minute stream-of-consciousness blitzkrieg, it’s less a series of verses than it is one extended chorus. Throughout the album Harris uses urgent lyrical repetition to great effect and backed by the driving rhythm section, Fuckin’ A barely stops to breathe in its 28-minute running time.
"Even though you repeat so much there is still a ton of words ’cause I cram a lot of words into each verse and chorus," explains Harris. "That wasn’t a point lyrically for me as much as I wanted to have songs that you could be singing along to them right away. I’d love to have someone hear one of the songs for the very first time and halfway through the song they could be singing along with it, because it’s so catchy."
Despite the changes the band has gone through since their formation in 2002, the end musical result is the same. Their three-chord hook makes the absolute most of their no-fi roots and keeping it simple keeps boredom at bay. If anything, their material is even more streamlined than it has been in the past.
"Some of the songs actually started out longer. We all kind of have the same opinion in terms of keeping the songs really short, keeping the records short, keeping the shows super short and tight. It’s the old always-leaving-people-wanting-more trick. One of the main things about us is to really distil it down to the most basic parts – the most basic instrumentation, like a remedial, simplistic approach."
By doing this, Harris is able to keep in line musically with his musical influences – The Breeders, Eric’s Trip and The Ramones – however when it comes to execution, he has rewritten the DIY mandate to suit his frugal pocketbook.
"I think it’s just S.E.P.F.I., which is just ‘somebody else pays for it,’ or D.I.Y.S.E.P.F.I. – ‘do it yourself, someone else pays for it.’ That’s how we feel about working with Sub Pop. They have been really good about letting us just have control over everything," says Harris. "We really feel like a DIY band because… we are still making our record covers cut-and-paste style, but then we have a label with money to back it up and promote it."
Initially signing with Sub Pop with a three-record deal, The Thermals have knocked off two of them in as many years. Given Harris’s lyrical ferocity and the band’s almost hyperactive productivity, it would appear that, along with tour plans, the next year will see even more creative output for The Thermals. This should be fine with Harris, who credits constant change as his main motivation.
"A lot of it is short attention span, I think. Those songs could be longer and broader and people would probably like them even more, maybe. I personally write songs to fit my taste. Not that I’m not efficient as far as wasting, but when it comes to music – no waste at all, just cutting all the fat out of everything."
CELEB TOP FIVE
Top Five favourite Sub Pop releases (that aren’t Thermals records) according to Hutch Harris of The Thermals:
1. Elevator to Hell – Parts 1-3
2. Mudhoney – Mudhoney
3. Nirvana – Bleach
4. The Shins – Oh, Inverted World
5. Iron and Wine – The Creek Drank the Cradle |
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