Nothing to get excited about folks

The Thermals, one of Portland’s most famous contemporary “post-pop-punk” groups, have graced the pages of Spin, The Portland Mercury and Pitchfork and are now off in tour-land promoting their new album, “Personal Life.” 

Lyrically, “Personal Life” is a mature turn inwards for the band. Previous records have been notorious for their political agendas as well as being conceptual albums, an idea that has strangely been treated as new or cutting edge in the case of The Thermals. Albums such as “Fucking A” and “The Body, The Blood, The Machine” are known for being sort of in-your-face soapbox retellings of the injustices of the exterior world. (Un)fortunately The Thermals, lacking any sense of artistic subtlety, focuses this album’s lyrics on “personal life” and whatever that might entail.

Upon reading the track titles, one is a bit encouraged that these songs may hold some gems of truth, especially because the names are like an interesting musical sandwich—the first track is entitled, “I’m Gonna Change Your Life” and the last is “You Changed My Life.” But don’t be fooled. Starting with the lyrics: There is nothing new, genuine or unique about the way they deliver these verses or the content held within them. It seems as though the rhymes lead the thoughts rather than the other way around.

While rhyme schemes can be brilliant when manifested in a crafty manner, the choice needs to be made whether the lyrics are going to be wholly rhyme-based with simple content, or conceptually based with the rhymes acting only as delicious treats for our ears to appreciate. But in fact, they seem so immature, you wonder if the band asked some 12-year-olds to write them. While the lyrics are more personal (“It’s not a feeling you get, it’s a feeling you learn to protect”) or the repetitious “I don’t believe you!,” it is not fair to say that this makes the lyrics more interesting by any means. 

Don’t expect much more from the music, either. While the members of the band definitely know how to play their instruments, there is nothing new in the way they deliver their tunes. It seems as though the motif throughout the album is an embarrassing homage to emo clean-punk for young, babbling middle-school girls. Maybe it’s Hutch Harris’ whiney voice that throws the whole thing off, or the superficial riffs that follow overly used chord progressions as if there are no other options. Maybe the band is still uncertain just how to the shift from criticizing external to expressing the internal. The one triumph in the album is the 30-second noise drone at the very end of the ninth song, “A Reflection,” where the most honesty seems to drip out of the speakers. But watch out, the next song immediately reminds you that you are indeed listening to The Thermals’ new album: “Holding on was all I could do. Now when I’m cold, now when I hold, I hold onto you.”

Overall, the album is more than a little uncomfortable to listen to. It is an uncertainty as to the classification of their sound; they definitely lack the spitting edge angst of true punk, but even to stretch their genre to post-punk would be a shame and a lie. It seems the only genre left to The Thermals with all their superficialities would be Pop in the purest sense of the term: simple, upbeat, shallow.