So Much For The City

It’s been a fair while since a band has managed to shake things up with any real flourish in this town. A couple of months ago, it seemed that the city was pretty easy to define in terms of a musical ecosystem. We had our Frames, our Turns, both our Damiens, and like good pals, they loved us and we loved them right back. Then, in the manner that some exotic New York teen beauty queen shows up for class at a backwater Nebraska high school, along come an Irish band that are decidedly… un-Irish, and a chaos of sorts ensues.

No hanging about year after year at Road Records, Whelan’s or The Long Hall for these boyos. In, fact, the first most of us even heard of The Thrills was their signing to a UK label for an undisclosed but reportedly massive sum. In fact, The Thrills had become the stuff of legend, not least in the UK press, before most of us had even seen them live, let alone had the time to bring them into our collective bosom. And having witnessed the ‘workhorse’ ethic displayed by Irish songwriters for some time, we were unused to such proceedings. They were a band, we were told, with an arsenal of perfect and full-bodied pop songs ready to take on the world. And they had good hair, for chrissakes. You don’t get too much of that sort of carry on to the pound these days.

With that in mind, the release of So Much For The City was always going to be interesting. The band’s reputation has truly preceded them, and we are more than aware of the Beach Boys/Neil Young comparisons that have been exhausted by every lazy critic who has encountered them. Even the titles, ‘Santa Cruz (You’re Not That Far)’, ‘Deckchairs And Cigarettes’, ‘Hollywood Kids’ and ‘’Til The Tide Creeps In’ evoke American surfer dude culture.

Fortunately for The Thrills, the good news is that they have lived up to the hype and managed to bear the weight of expectation to deliver one of the finest, most delightfully crafted albums I’ve heard in a long time. The initial reaction is that it seems incredible that such a Weezer-like, Californian-sounding band originated in this country – imagine, instead of surfing the Pacific every day of their young lives, they probably watched Bosco and ate Homestead Jam, just like you and me. Too weird.

We had all savoured the rush of sun to the head that is ‘One Horse Town’, and this album is a steady release of the same sun-drenched euphoria. Not since watching Bungle, George and Geoffrey painting the whole world with a rainbow has life seemed so rich with colour and frivolity. As far as debut albums go, this is truly remarkable stuff, and most bands go their whole careers without displaying such eloquence and musical dexterity.

One can’t help but wonder what we ever did for feel-good music before this arrived. You may not have had enough time to love them like one of our own before they were unleashed on the rest of the world, but you will love them all the same.

Now, if only we had the sun to go with it…