Our site recommends:
MP3 Archive
Blogs, Magazines, Friends,
& Well-Wishers:
75
Or Less
All Music
Another
Sunny Day in Pop!
Aquarium
Drunkard
Brooklyn
Vegan
Buddy
Head
Central
Village
Coolfer
Ear
Farm
Earvolution
Flux
Blog
Future
Perfect Radio
Golden
Fiddle
Gorilla
vs. Bear
I
Guess I'm Floating
Heart
On a Stick
Largehearted
Boy
Modern
Age
Music
for Robots
Music
Snobbery
My
Old Kentucky Blog
NME
No
Rock & Roll Fun
Paper
Thin Walls
Pitchfork
Prefix
Mag
Rawk
Blog
Rolling
Stone
Said
the Gramophone
Six
Eyes
SPIN
Stereo
Gum
Stylus
Magazine
Thighs Wide Shut
Tiny
Lucky Genius
Village
Indian
Wrank
Music
Yeti
Don't Dance
You
Ain't No Picasso
Features:
The Thermals Interview
| The Thermals recently gave us The Body, The Blood, The Machine. And it rocks. It wallops you across the face with originality from it's vivid album-starter "Here's Your Future" to the gripping closing track, "I Hold the Sound"---the LP is more of a "paranoid fantasy" than a full-fledged concept record. It's a story that questions faith, the government, and relationships, accompanied by high-powered guitars and cutting lyrics. A little over two years after Fuckin A ripped you to shreds, this creative little gem is where the Thermals are at now. Singer/guitarist Hutch Harris took some time out to talk to Mute Noise about what they are up to... |
| Mute Noise: Where are you guys right now? |
| Hutch: We just got to Newport, Kentucky. |
| Mute Noise: Excellent, how’s the tour going? |
| Hutch: The tour’s really good. We love Cursive, it’s been awesome. We’ve opened a lot of big shows on the east coast and west coast. So, we just have a lot of places in the Midwest that we always go to that we never play, so that’s been really cool. Like, Chicago, Minneapolis, Philly, well that’s not true we played at the Troupe, I don’t know, we’ve had amazing shows in Buffalo, Philly was really good, Cleveland, Minneapolis, they’ve all been really good. |
| Mute Noise: Which of the new songs are becoming more of the crowd favorites, that you’re getting the most reaction from? |
| Hutch: The new songs get the best response, it’s like people know the new songs better than anything. A lot of people know the ones from MySpace. But, “A Pillar of Salt” and “Returning to the Fold”, and “Here’s Your Future”, those all get huge responses. “Pillar of Salt” is going over really well. We had “Returning to the Fold” up early on our MySpace, so earlier when we were touring, people were going crazy for it. A lot of people knew it already. |
| Mute Noise: And “Returning to the Fold” was the song of the day on NPR a few weeks ago? |
| Hutch: Yeah, that one was one of my favorite reviews that we got, it was really cool. |
| Mute Noise: Great, so, the Microsoft Zune, I guess is preloaded with “A Pillar of Salt” , have you heard about the Zune, are you planning on getting one? |
| Hutch: I should get a free one, I think. You would think. Did it come out already? |
| Mute Noise: Before Christmas, it’s supposed to come out. |
| Hutch: Yeah, yeah, well, I’m hoping they fucking throw us some. I don’t really know that much about it, except that we’re on there. |
| Mute Noise: Do you already have an iPod? |
| Hutch: Yeah, yeah, I have the mini, we have a couple in the van, I just have a mini. |
| Mute Noise: Cool. Well, the new album, it’s a lot clearer sounding than some of the past records, as far as just clarity especially ballad-type songs like “Test Pattern”, but was it a conscious decision that you wanted the new record to sound like that, or was it a natural progression? |
| Hutch: It’s totally both. It’s natural for bands to keep having better produced records as you go along, especially when you start where we started, on a four-track. And then also for us, we just wanted each record to sound different, no matter how it’s produced, you know the songs are pretty similar but the styles are totally different. |
| Mute Noise: Definitely. Also, there aren’t as many subtleties on the album. I mean, it’s not like you’re talking about things you’ve never talked about before on a record. |
| Hutch: You know we never have a ton of time, so it’s always pretty urgent, we’re working quickly. About as quickly as we can. |
| Mute Noise: Right, and not even just with the recording process, but with the messages of theses songs, was it something that you felt like you needed to get it out right away? |
| Hutch: Maybe for myself. I don’t know, it was just interesting to me as a fictional story, and I just got excited about the concept of it. More than I felt it being urgent, I think it’s timely for sure, but I don’t feel like it’s preachy, it’s more of a story, so I wasn’t like urgently trying to get the message out. |
| Mute Noise: How long did it take, because I know you took a lot more time with the lyrics, how long was the writing process? |
| Hutch: It was probably a good three or four months. That’s a really long time for me, and I was really proud at the end of it. |
| Mute Noise: Of course you didn’t swear on this album, was that just like an exercise in creativity, or so you could get emotion out through different ways. But is that something that you would keep doing in future recordings? |
| Hutch: Yeah, I really don’t think there will be much swearing on the next record either. I think it’s more inclusive to not have swearing in it], and also I don’t need it as much. It’s something that we’ve done, you know Fuckin’ A, was filled with cursing, so I feel like I got a lot of it out, I guess [laughs]. |
| Mute Noise: On “St. Rosa and the Swallows”, I like the lyric where you mention “days in auto mode, days where there’s nothing to show” How would you describe a day like that? |
| Hutch: A day where maybe you wake up at four in the afternoon, because you got too drunk the night before [laughs]. Or just a day where you feel totally uninspired. It’s about depression, and about being lonely. |
| Mute Noise: Excellent. I wanted to talk to you about the video for “A Pillar of Salt”…is that you taking a beer bong in the video? |
| Hutch: Yeah, that’s funny, that does have to get edited for the MTV cut. But yeah, there’s a couple of beer-bongings in there, but one, the crew did at the end of the first day. Kathy poured one for me. I don’t think I’d ever done one like that before, it was pretty good though. |
| Mute Noise: Where did you make the video at? |
| Hutch: At this place called Gear Head, in South Beach Portland. I like having videos, but it takes a lot of time and planning and stuff. I don’t know, I’d rather be playing shows and recording. I don’t totally love [the process], but we liked the finished project. |
| Mute Noise: How soon are you looking to record a follow-up to this record, are you guys more focused on touring right now, or do you have a plan for a new record on the horizon? |
| Hutch: We have some songs started. Kathy’s been writing a lot. Kathy and I have already started working on new songs. We’re going to be touring through next summer. And hopefully we’ll be able to write a lot, hopefully by the early part of next year we can write, and then do a recording next year. |
| Mute Noise: Great, I’m looking forward to it. One last question, you’re not playing a show on Halloween, do you have any big plans for Halloween? |
Hutch:
We are just fucking driving our asses off. We have our last show in
Vegas, so we have two days to get home to Portland, it’s like
20 hours worth of driving, and then we’re just home that night,
and then fly to New York the very next morning for CMJ. So we’re
just going to be racing around, maybe we’ll wear costumes in
the car [laughs].  |
Also,
check out if the Thermals are coming to your city. For more information
check out their MySpace
page. They just announced a string of Euro dates:
10/8/2006- Lawerence,
KS
10/10/2006 - Houston, TX
10/11/2006 - Denton, TX
10/12/2006 - Austin, TX
10/13/2006 - Norman, OK
10/15/2006 - Denver, CO
10/17/2006 - Salt Lake City, UT
10/18/2006 - Boise, ID
10/20/2006 - Seattle, WA
10/21/2006 - Portland, OR
10/23/2006 - San Francisco, CA
10/26/2006 - Los Angeles, CA
10/27/2006 - San Diego, CA
10/28/2006 - Pomona, CA
10/29/2006 - Las Vegas, NV
11/2/2006 - New York City, NY
11/3/2006 - New York City, NY
11/23/2006 - Tilburg
11/24/2006 - Gronigen
11/25/2006 - Utrecht
11/26/2006 - London
11/27/2006 - Leeds
11/28/2006 - Glasgow
11/29/2006 - Belfast
11/30/2006 - Dublin
12/2/2006 - Paris
12/4/2006 - Zurich
12/6/2006 - Nurnberg
12/7/2006 - Wien
12/9/2006 - Muenchen
12/10/2006 - Frankfurt
12/11/2006 - Berlin
12/13/2006 - Bothenburg
12/14/2006 - Stolkholm
12/15/2006 - Oslo
12/16/2006 - Copenhagen
12/17/2006 - Hamburg
12/19/2006 - Koeln
Official website: TheThermals.com | Myspace