Photo credit (The Thermals, Point Juncture): Greg Szeto

Photo credit (The Shaky Hands): Shantel Mitchell

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MP3: The Thermals – When I Was Afraid from Now We Can See (2009)

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MP3: The Shaky Hands – Whales Sing from The Shaky Hands (2006)

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MP3: The Shaky Hands – We Are Young from Lunglight (2008)

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MP3: Point Juncture, WA – Sioux Arrow from Heart to Elk (2008)

The modestly-filled Black Cat enjoyed a good-to-great Wednesday night of rock from three Portland exports.   Read the rest…

The Thermals play DC’s the Black Cat Mainstage on Wed May 13th.

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MP3: The Thermals – No Culture Icons from More Parts Per Million (2003)

The fetching bassist of Portland pop-punksters the Thermals is one Kathy Foster. And a long-standing rockstar crush for me (see right *drool*). So it was with great giddiness that I got her on the horn and poked and prodded her brain about the latest Thermals-related affairs, which she answered graciously and humbly, with a touch of coyness, only deepening my googly-eyes. OK, enough school-boy non-sense. Read up on my thoughts on their latest, Now We Can See and let’s talk the after-Sub Pop and the after-life.

Aural States – I think I talked to Hutch around the time when you guys were considering leaving Sub Pop.  Could you tell me more about the decision to leave and then sign with Kill Rock Stars?

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MP3: The Thermals – When We Were Alive

The Thermals just green-lit fake-out, that was a PR mistake! another track to be released off their upcoming album, Now We Can See (to be released Apr 7 on Kill Rock Stars).  ”When We Were Alive” is perhaps the most rollicking, fun track on the album with some great verses.

I thought it was a grand effort, enough to make it a recommended album.  Do check it out and enjoy life after death.  Also, for more reading, check out an oldish interview I did with Hutch a few years ago when they were still rife with outrage, touring behind The Body The Blood The Machine.

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MP3: The Thermals – Misfit (Wipers cover) from Datrotter Session

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MP3: The Thermals – Back to the Sea from 2006′s The Body, The Blood, The Machine

The Thermals (Wiki) are probably one of my favorite projects to come out of the Portland scene in the past decade, and definitively made a case for pop-punk that matters.

In just their first 2 years, they released as many self-recorded albums (More Parts Per Million & Fuckin’ A), sprint-length and packed with the lowest-fidelity punk you could dream of.  Guitars shredding through your speakers like razors, rusty shards of metal being shaken up in a tin can.  The result was exhilirating, almost exhausting in purity.  A complete embrace of the founding elements of punk music: simple, short songs, high volume and distortion, and a DIY ethos.

Then along comes 2006′s absolutely remarkable The Body, The Blood, The Machine, a relatively lush and glorious pop-punk album, their lo-fi sound seemed to be a bygone era, and the Thermals brought us a whole different kind of apocalypse than we expected.  Continuing the trend of sylistic pairs of albums with their latest, Now We Can See (a sequel to the events and ideas from TBTBTM), Hutch Harris and Kathy Foster have packed another record to the gills with tight and slick gems.

So what do the Thermals bring to the table that sets them apart from their obvious forebears, groups like the Ramones, that similarly played simple, ultra-hooky pop-infused punk?

Lyrics.

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Damn you Pitchfork. You have me converted. I am officially never going to get anything done. This series of personal faves the Thermals playing on a rooftop in NYC just put me over the edge. I’m officially hooked. There’s also a killer Radiohead performance.

Score: P4K=1, AS=0.

For those of you unaware, Pitchfork Media launched a new web-based 24-hour music channel called Pitchfork.tv for exclusive video content of all sorts relating to music, from music videos to live performances to documentaries. This must be how amazing MTV felt back when they actually used the channel for music.

I have a confession. I am addicted to Portland’s most-prominent purveyors of earnest, politically charged punk, the Thermals. I drove to NYC this past August to catch them with Ted Leo in the basin of NYC’s largest pool, drained, in the middle of McCarren Park.

I didn’t want to tell Ted, but I was there more for Hutch and Kathy.

Behold, the latest Daytrotter session here. Wherein the Thermals are doing their thing. Albeit with a little less of the frantic, lightspeed tempo of their reputed live shows.

And apparently, with hints of what the new album will sound like…and I personally cannot wait. Couple vids off The Blood, The Body, The Machine for you after the jump.

Has dissent-punk ever been this endearing, heartfelt and fun? And during this election year, has it ever been more needed?
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