Deaf and happy?

This was how I was supposed to be after last night’s gig according to my friend. Post gig I was just deaf. Seriously couldn’t hear out of my left ear. Anyway the hearing is back now so not to panic.

We went to go and see The Thermals last night, an American band on their fourth album who describe themselves in a variety of genre-guiding adjectives but mainly stick to the very clear indie/alternative/post-pop-punk rock band description.

So to be honest, they’re not really my gin and tonic; I thought they sounded quite similar to a (much) louder version of New Found Glory strangely enough! The set list comprised of about 15 two minute songs that all merged into one long ear shattering cacophony of noise with not really much distinction between them. I say “much” because there were a couple of tracks that caught my interest if only for 30 seconds. Aside from the music there were however a few of things that caught my interest and entertained me:
1. The bassist’s hair is awesome. Really short and curly and the most bouncy hair I’ve ever seen and as she strummed the bass her head bobbed back and forth like a broken jack in the box and her hair bounced all over the place with a life of it’s own.
2. The crowd at the front seemed to be full of floppy haired, glasses wearing young boys who started off nodding their heads in time like they were auditioning for the role of the noddy dog in the Churchill adverts, this then progressed on to jumping up and down on the spot yet not in time with the music or each other. Eventually they found their rhythm and began jumping in unison but their arms remained glued to their sides. This looked most odd.
3. The drummer is the happiest/craziest person I’ve ever seen.

On reflection, when I logged on to their website this morning to try and find a video to post, I did quite enjoy the lyrics of the songs so perhaps it was just a shame that you couldn’t really hear the lyrics at the gig over everything else. Anyway, here’s a video of one of the songs from their new album.



I also wanted to mention the support band, Sketches, who I thought were actually better than the Thermals. Apart from the fact that I thought the lead singer was about to die at any second because he was so skinny (honestly, I thought his shin bone was going to come splintering out of his skin as he was stamping his foot on stage), I enjoyed this more. Their single is out now so here’s a link to their myspace also.