Some time in 2002 Rolling Stone had this big article devoted to new garage bands, like the Strokes and the White Stripes and the Vines. Bands that have nothing in common and yet thanks to the magic of music journalism are all thrown together and labeled using some noun that has no musical connotations at all. "Garage" groups popped up everywhere, as if what they were doing were suddenly creative, and everyone was happy because rock and roll was back in all its stripped down no talent glory. I'm not quite sure that most people were aware of the fact that stripped down no talent rock and roll has existed ever since the FIRST garage movement back in the '60s. Nevertheless, garage became the new emo and every one who had earlier been described as grunge or alternative or post punk is now called garage and everyone is happy because none of those terms actually describe music anyway.
The Thermals are (is?) a four piece übergarage band from Portland, Oregon. Their debut, More Parts Per Million, is available on Sub Pop Records. Imagine you and your friends starting a garage band and going through all the d.i.y. motions, and then imagine the band not sucking at all. Hard to picture, isn't it? Well that's because most lo-fi d.i.y. garage bands sound exactly like you'd expect, poor quality music consisting mostly of power chords and a singer who is either drunk or high singing words that are obviously substance induced. Interestingly, the Thermals have all the stereotypical elements of a garage band, but someone along the way must have forgotten to tell them that they had to suck. The Thermals really do rock, in a way that makes me remember when rock meant something other than "sounds like crap."
More Parts Per Million is thirteen tracks and twenty-seven minutes long of crashing through the type of music that should be called punk rock if all those crappy punk bands didn't have control over the word. Thankfully, The Thermals are creative and fashioned some of their own useless terms to describe their music. They even took the time to license these terms, so technically I'm supposed to pay them when I write that they are "no-fi" and "very f***ing listenable." But since there's a band in Australia that's been called the Thermals since 1998 and the Thermals I'm reviewing started in 2002, I figure if they don't sue I won't sue.
Each track on the album features a perfect union of the egg of punk mindset with the seed of pop sing-alongability with the fertilization drugs of distortion giving birth to that kid that is going to grow up making everyone else feel inferior without actually doing anything special. I can not think of a time when listening to a rock album has made me this happy with music.
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