The Thorns

Item: The Thorns
Author: Dave Sims

(2003)

Reviewed by Dave Sims

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Label Aware Records / Columbia RecordsThe Phantom Tollbooth2003

americana folk rock pop rock

Please don't call them a "supergroup." While it's true that all the members of The Thorns - Pete Droge, Matthew Sweet and Shawn Mullins - are solo artists in their own right, each enjoying moderate success throughout the nineties, none of them have exactly cut wide swaths of neon across the pop culture sky. At this point in their careers The Thorns have more in common with Crosby, Stills and Nash circa 1969 than they do with genuine supergroups like Little Village or The Traveling Wilburys. Like CSN (hold the Y), The Thorns craft smart yet unpretentious folk-rock with tuneful hooks and ear-tickling harmonies. Their eponymous debut also recalls the gauziest 70's California Rock, "Peaceful Easy Feeling"-era Eagles or just about anything Loggins and Messina ever recorded. This is a group with nothing to prove and nothing to lose, and they've made a record that's as casual as a summer sunset.

From the shameless hook-mongering of the first two tracks to their reworking of The Jayhawks' melancholy and masterful "Blue" into a sugary power-pop confection, it's obvious that what we have here is a Labrador puppy, nay, a Sally Field of an album. It just wants you to like it, to really really like it. But The Thorns never promise more than they deliver, and that guileless, heart-on-the-sleeve earnestness makes the record work.

Edie Brickell once sang "Choke me in the shallow water before I get too deep." The Thorns seem to have taken that perspective to heart. They have no axes to grind, no existential dilemmas to work out. They're just here to wallow in the simple pleasures of a well-turned lyric against an obvious but irresistible melody. The opening tune, the effervescent "Runaway Feeling," states their raison d'être clearly: "You know that rock and roll feelin' really makes you feel high."

Such perky gladhanding could become bothersome if the collective songcraft wielded by The Thorns didn't produce songs with such charm and good intentions. Lines like "Time heals almost everything/and the world outside doesn't need to let you in/lay your own stepping stones" from "Think it Over," - perhaps the best country rock tune Glenn Frey never wrote start on the surface and sit there, with such willful naivete that it's almost shocking. But Thorns, as they say in the hard rocking title track yes, there's a song called "Thorns" aren't interested in complications or the darker side of the human condition. "Thorns just keep walking away from it all/I don't have a plan/For calling you back at all/Thorns keep walking away from it all."

Fittingly, the production is polished to the point of absurdity, like 75 layers of varnish on a perfectly good piece of woodwork. But it's all part of The Thorns' plan. This is a record to give in to, like the last piece of cake in an empty kitchen. No one's looking, and no one cares anyway, so just dive in. In a post-grunge and post No-Depression world, The Thorns don't want to be an alternative anything. They just want you to like them. So like them already.