The Thermals - Personal Life
- Written by Andrew Seaton
The Thermals have dealt with their fair share of heavy topics in their time. The kind of things thrashed out in the minds of all the greats; Hobbes, Locke, Machiavelli, Marx and Hicks – Bill Hicks that is. Yep, the discography of The Thermals is starting to look like something that could run as a soundtrack for the sets of the late Hicks as they, like him, have sceptically grappled with politics, war and religion as touchstones for their art. 2006’s The Body, The Blood, The Machine saw the Portland trio craft an image of a Christian totalitarian state that had to be escaped from; a theme that for many chimed well with the moralising of the late Bush era. But now that The Thermals find themselves in the liberal paradise that is Obama’s America they decide with their latest record, Personal Life, to write an album about that, at least theoretically, apolitical topic; love.
Opening track ‘I’m Gonna Change Your Life’ exemplifies this. Hutch Harris excitedly tells an unnamed love in the chorus of how “I wanna know your feelings” and “I wanna know your secrets”. The band deal with both sides of the relationship coin and tracks like ‘Alone, A Fool’ see lines such as, “When I’m by myself, you’re with someone else. I’m a fool”. As a theme it works well for the band. Obviously love and relationships are something done by almost every band on the planet at some point but Harris’s lyrics are sensitive and well-written. It’s welcome to see a softer side of the trio and the lyrical content of Personal Life’s is something everyone can associate with themselves.
The problem with Personal Life is not lyrical but musical. The record lacks the overall punchiness that the band have developed over the years and some tracks are left underwhelming as a result. Take the opener, ‘I’m Gonna Change Your Life’, a slow track with progressive strumming that doesn’t really build up to anything and is left as a bit of an oddity. The next two tracks, ‘I Don’t Believe You’ and ‘Never Listen To Me’, are better; they are louder, more interesting and generally sound more like Thermals songs.
Later on in the album, ‘A Reflection’ seems to suffer from a similar sense of a lack of gravitas. An ending featuring prolonged feedback in a song usually follows a crescendo of some sort. Not so here - the song more or less limps into it and then moves on to the album’s finishing track, ‘You Changed My Life’; a good song with a great guitar riff throughout. Old fans will enjoy the trademark Thermals ‘Ooh ah ooh ah oohs’ found on a couple tracks such as ‘Your Love Is So Strong’. Unfortunately there’s not enough of these kind of exciting pop-punk moments that the band are usually capable of elsewhere.
Artists should never be criticised for changing their musical style or for experimenting, but The Thermals are not doing that here. Though enjoyable in places - and it does get better with subsequent listens - Personal Life is a record that is attempting to pick off where Now We Can See left off but instead turns out to be a somewhat forgettable experience.