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Music reviews |
The Thrills - So Much For the City
A few retro-pop gems, plus some boring slower songs, from a California wanabee band from Ireland.
Virgin
Release date: 5/27/03
Rating: C+1. Santa Cruz (You're Not That Far) 4:13
2. Big Sur 3:07
3. Don't Steal Our Sun 2:50
4. Deckchairs and Cigarettes 4:58
5. One Horse Town 3:14
6. Old Friends, New Lovers 4:01
7. Say It Ain't So 2:44
8. Hollywood Kids 5:33
9. Just Traveling Through 3:21
10. Your Love Is Like Las Vegas 2:23
11. 'Til the Tide Creeps In 10:06
The best trick The Thrills pull off on this, their first full-length album, is to convince you that they’re from California. Nope – they’re Irish. How does a group from the cloud-covered, peat-bog emerald island that spawned Van Morrison, U2 and the Riverdance people create such a sunny, harmony-drenched bit of retro-pop? (The answer: a several-month songwriting sojourn in San Diego.)
Indeed, this is as retro as retro-pop can get. So Much for the City is an album of traditional, sugary tunes with little updating from the bubblegum heyday of the Thrills’ influences: Phil Spector, Brian Wilson, the Beatles, the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Mamas and the Papas, etc., etc.
When they do it right, you don’t mind that you’ve heard all this before. Particularly on the two gems that make the album worthwhile: “Big Sur” and “One Horse Town.” The second track on the album, the ambling “Big Sur” features an eminently hummable melody, a chorus that will run through your head for days, and accompaniment from what appears to be an electric banjo. Track five, “One Horse Town,” has a catchy guitar part, sparkling backing vocals, and a piano/drum rhythm on the verses that’s skillfully lifted right out of a Ronnettes song from forty-plus years ago. How do they pull this off, in this day and age, and still make it sound as good as it does?
If only the whole album were nearly as good as these two songs. Unfortunately, the rest of the album’s tracks are overwhelmed by either cheesiness or dullness. (In fact, my wife, who heard “Big Sur” and “One Horse Town” a couple of times on a recent car trip, thinks they’re cheesy too.)
The cheesy songs are at least listenable. The album opener, “Santa Cruz (You’re Not That Far),” isn’t actually all that bad – the mandolin sounds great and the harmonies work brilliantly. But the repetition of the title (or just “Santa Cruz”) over and over – the words “Santa Cruz” are heard fourteen times over the song’s final 1 ¼ minutes – is enough to test your sanity.
“Don’t Steal Our Sun” is more treacly pop, helped enormously by a great “Got To Get You Into My Life” rhythm-guitar-and-drum combination on the verses. But the song is as cheesy as its title indicates (though not as cheesy as Len’s 2000 hit “Steal our Sunshine”): how many times can anyone stand to listen to the song’s repeated “don’t steal our sun – ooh wah ooh”? Ugh.
“Say It Ain’t So” is the best of the cheesy songs – another decent piece of pure pop, this time an attempt to sound country-ish, with a shuffling beat, piano, and twangy guitar. A little of that twangy stuff goes a long way, though.
The rest of the record’s songs are slower and, well, dull. They’re either dull because they’re plodding, boring dirges (“Deckchairs and Cigarettes,” “Old Friends, New Lovers,” “Hollywood Kids,” “Just Travelling Through”) or because they’re seemingly half-realized mid-tempo songs that don’t go anywhere (the last two tracks, “Your Love is Like Las Vegas” and “’Til the Tide Creeps In”). At least the mid-tempo songs feature some good harmonies and nice touches, like the organ and harmonica on “Tide.”
The slower songs really don’t complement lead singer Conor Deasy’s voice which, though clear and distinctive, has a limited range and tends to hold onto consonants (particularly letter “R”) too long. This isn’t a liability at all on the straight, faster pop songs, especially when he is accompanied by backing vocals. But the ballads end up highlighting Deasy’s weaknesses.
The lyrics don’t help, either. In addition to the repetition I already complained about, there’s more cliché’s per minute this side of Diane Warren – song titles alone, like “One Horse Town” and “Say It Ain’t So,” make clear what I mean.
The record does have its great classic pop moments, though, and those – enough to fill an EP, perhaps – are a true pleasure to listen to. The Thrills are very, very good at what they do well. But So Much for the City betrays an inability to stray very far from the trad-pop model they’ve mastered.
