End Year Music Roundup

Now, I have show reviews to write still, but I haven't gotten to them and I don't know how my net access will be over the next couple weeks (I'll be in Ecuador), so I'll post my top albums of the year now.

Here's the quick roundup. Top 14 albums of the years, since there were 14 I thought worthy, and in no particular order:
World/Inferno Friendship Society - Red-Eyed Soul
Mission of Burma - the Obliterati
Mono & World's End Girlfriend - Palmless Prayer/Mass Murder Refrain
the Evens - Get Evens
Channels - Waiting for the Next End of the World
Ef - Give Me Beauty... Or Give Me Death!
Envy - Insomniac Doze
the Thermals - the Body, the Blood, the Machine
Liars - Drum's Not Dead
Red Sparowes - Every Red Heart Shines Toward the Red Sun
Fucked Up - Hidden World
Young Widows - Settle Down City
Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped
Boris - Pink

Show of the Year: State-X New Forms with Sonic Youth, Mono, Magik Markers, Circle, No Neck Blues Band, Clark, My Cat is an Alien, Danielson, and many more in Den Haag.

Album I'm most excited for next year: Iggy and the Stooges - Weirdness (What the hell are the Stooges doing releasing a new album anyway?)

Have a good new year, folks.

Here's Your Future

The last time I saw the Thermals, they were opening for Mike Watt and as such were more than a little eclipsed by my awe at seeing the elder statesman of jamming econo, and even so I had a great time. This time, I was more familiar with their material and they were in a well-deserved headlining slot, so I was prepared for a far more impressive showing. I got all that and more. The Thermals really know how to put on a fun, intense, and inclusive show.

The opener, Feverdream, were a Dutch band I'd happily avoided seeing at ZXZW, and they showed exactly why this time. They played hackneyed, whiney emo, with no interesting or redeeming characteristics other than a fairly good drummer, and had absolutely nothing Dutch about them. I spent most of their set either at the bar or at the Thermals' merch table, and I was hardly alone, with more people being outside the stage area than in. It was a shame about the weak opener; I tried to not let it mar the rest of the show experience. They finished quickly enough, anyway.

The bad taste left pretty much as soon as the Thermals arrived on stage, though. The band, grown to four members since I last saw them, wasted no time after Hutch Harris exclaimed “Hi, we're the Thermals”, lashing out immediately with “Our Trip”. They followed with “Every Stitch”, replicating the one-two punch of the beginning of their album before last, Fuckin' A. This wasn't a sign of things to come, as “St. Rosa and the Swallows” began what would eventually lead to the entirety of their most recent (and best) album, The Body, The Blood, The Machine being played. The new songs sounded particularly great live, despite the lack of the organ that made the album such a change from their previous sound. Instead, they played with an additional guitar for a far fuller sound – a huge improvement from their previous show, exchanging forced rawness for far more volume and intensity.

That intensity wasn't just a consequence of the instruments, though – the Thermals themselves obviously put all their energy into the show, and were one of the most enthusiastic bands I've ever seen while doing it. Because of their sheer happiness, I felt awful when someone in the crowd threw beer at Hutch Harris during “No Culture Icons”, leading to him stopping and saying “if anyone throws anything at anyone on the stage, the show's going to end” after the song – the only significant stage chatter except for “thank you so much” the entire show. They were obviously put off, as the next song (“Let Your Earth Quake, Baby”) was significantly less good than the rest of the set. Afterward, though, the crowd behaved itself and the show returned to being a good time for everyone involved. By the end of the show, when rather say “good night” or so forth, they said “OK, we'll go offstage for a couple minutes, you go through the ritual, clap and so on”, everyone was back to having enough fun to clap enormously until the band came back on, rounding off with a four-song encore including the subject of the infamous Hummer solicitation, “It's Trivia” and the rarely-heard single b-side “Everything Thermals”. At that point, it was obvious that everyone involved had had a great time that night.

I have to knock a couple points off for the atrocious openers, but the show was still great, easily deserving of a 8/10.

Setlist:

Our Trip

Every Stitch

St Rosa and the Swallows

A Passing Feeling

Brace and Break

Born Dead

How We Know

I Might Need You To Kill

An Ear for Baby

A Stare Like Yours

Test Pattern

I Hold The Sound

Here's Your Future

Back to the Sea

No Culture Icons

Let Your Earth Quake, Baby

A Pillar of Salt

Returning to the Fold

Back to Gray

Power Doesn't Run On Nothing

Encore:

God and Country

It's Trivia

Top of the Earth

Everything Thermals