Album: JustamustacheArtist: Thunderbirds Are Now!
Label: French Kiss Records
"T-h-u-n-d-e-r, b-i-r-d-s are now!"
That's how the album opens. It's a couple of women chanting it like cheerleaders, with handclaps and everything. It's pretty funny.
And it lets the listener know just how much insane energy they're about to experience.
Listening to Thunderbirds Are Now! is a little bit like riding a rollercoaster, or taking off on a jet. It's a wonderful time, but things feel like they're just barely under control.
Actually, a better comparison for the album is a really intense circus. The simple flat-out energy and attack of the music is crazy enough to bring that image to mind.
Piece by piece, there is really nothing fantastic about Thunderbirds Are Now!. To start, drummer Mike Durgan is not great. That is, if he has massive talent, the band never needs him to show it. He can keep the song together, but he doesn't stand out.
Bassist Howard Chang is really responsible for the melody of almost every song. This is not completely remarkable--as the name of this blog indicates, the bass is the most important instrument when rocking--but Thunderbirds bass is really, really good. It's catchy, powerful, and never irritating or boring.
The guitarwork on Justamustache is the sort of crazy stuff you hear in the best At the Drive-In. Some of the more popular bands I could compare Allen's guitar parts to are Franz Ferdinand or Sparta. Really, just think "the opposite of Tool" and you'll have a good idea.
Vocally, TAN! boasts incredibly catchy lyrics and melodies. Every song has a refrain or lyric that I can't get out of my head. On the other hand, for a while I was convinced the singer was female. Allen has a sort of nervous urgency to his voice, which is also naturally somewhat high-pitched, that made me think "woman singer." But the vocals are a key part of the circus, crazy and intense.
Lastly, keyboardist/tambourinist Scott Allen (who I assume is the singer's brother) is really hard to describe. Now that I've seen TAN! live, I realize he's the energy man, responsible for keeping up the energy at the show--pretty much running around, throwing his tambourine, falling down, and generally flipping out. Think mic tricks. On the album, the keyboard parts are cool and everything, but not exactly necessary (despite what the French Kiss Records website says). Nothing against Scott, but the album rocks enough without him.
So there are the members. Now here are the songs.
"Better Safe Than Safari": A preview of the craziness to come. The song mysteriously starts with twenty seconds of holding one note (immediately after the cheer, that is). Then they're off and running, and in the first lines of the album you see why I really like TAN!:
You've got
A big mouth
With big words
Spilling out
Come here
Give me a kiss
With vocabulary lips
He said "vocabulary lips." And it didn't sound dumb as shit.
The defining moment of "Better Safe Than Safari," however, is the bridge. After a little guitar interlude, everybody jumps in, and Ryan Allen freaks out on the vocals. More than the rest of the song, the bridge is an indication of the intensity the listener is about to experience in the rest of the album. A line that always sticks in my head is "Who wants to be real?/It's more fun to pretend."
"Eat This City": Guitar and bass play the catchiest TAN! riff together at the start of this song. In fact, this whole song will be permanently lodged in your brain if you ever hear it--but not in a "Hollaback Girl" way; more of a "Blister in the Sun" sort of thing. A good thing.
This song is basically perfect. My only complaint is that, at 2:47, it's far too short. It even contains as close as TAN! comes to a guitar solo. If I had to pick a defining moment, it's probably the chorus, which is just "Eat this city" over and over. I have never heard a funnier command.
"198090 (Aquatic Cupid's)": Everybody dance!! While I've never heard TAN!'s previous release, Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief, I've heard this song is a throwback to that album. It's pretty dancey, and has the quarter-note guitar that requires.
I actually like the use of keyboards and samples in this song. At 1:50 the song rocks out with some racing bass, then launches into a second section separate from the rest of the song, much like the Franz Ferdinand hit "Take Me Out." It's an extremely catchy little part.
They talk slow
Repeating words that they already know
We talk fast
Steal from the future and not from the past
Anyway this song is dance punk and it's really cool.
"Harpoons of Love": A thundering (I mean cute) two-note keyboard part kicks off this pounding song. The lyrics in this one again reflect the devil theme. The chorus to this one makes me again think of the circus image. It's rough and rocking and hard to contain. The vocals are definitely what I've seen described as "sassy." The bridge on this one ("There's one thing (one thing) I do well/The first is buy and the second is sell") is again the most powerful part of the song.
Following the bridge Ryan Allen's guitar takes over, and for about half a minute you could be listening to any uptempo alternative rock song produced in the last twenty years. It's cool.
"Enough About Me, Let's Talk About Me": This song, probably fast by most bands' standards, is a little slow on this album. The structure of the verses--"Talked to a ___/Who thinks ____"--is a little irritating, and the chorus is nothing special either, in my opinion. However, after a guitar-driven interlude, the band plays a modified version of the chorus that is pretty cool.
Overall, however, this is one song that, in my opinion, just doesn't hold up compared to the rest of the album.
"To: Skulls": Tambourine galore! At least, in the intro of the song. This one is a little slower too, but contains some rocking guitar in both the verses and chorus. Scott Allen makes a triumphant appearance on vocals, and he and his brother trade during the chorus. It's a great success.
At 1:51, the drums and bass start a little syncopated rhythm while the Allen brothers do what they want. Then the drums do something besides keep the beat, and the song nearly falls apart. Fortunately, they pull it together in an almost Mars Volta-like moment.
"From: Skulls": Yes, this is a completely different song. A song driven by KEYBOARDS. At least partly. You can't ignore the bass. Vocals are at their sassiest, and they deliver the most intelligible chorus on the album:
Here's a message to the crowd:
It won't rain, not a single cloud
But tomorrow,
Tomorrow it's gonna pour.
If we waste all this precious time,
Then we'll commit the perfect crime
And scream "Murder!" (Murder!) when we find you dead on the floor.
See? Intelligible.
The song seems almost tame starting at 2:05 and nearly disappears at 3:15, drums knocking quietly along. Then at 3:35 it explodes and it is wonderful. Don't waste any precious time, I believe the message is. A classic emo scream from Scott Allen and this song signs off a winner.
"Bodies Adjust": I can't say the same for "Bodies Adjust." The keyboard is on piano voice, the drums are electronic, the vocals are doubled, the bass isn't doing shit. It's a softer dance song, and I wish it wasn't on this album. It's basically TAN! for anyone who wouldn't like the rest of the album.
That being said, I can enjoy this song. It gets stuck in my head just like any other TAN! song, and it's not bad at all. It just doesn't belong with "Eat This City" and the upcoming "Cobra Feet."
At 1:45 Ryan Allen's guitar almost convinces me to dance, and the repeated "Somebody adjust to the temperature" toward the end of the song is pretty cool. But the drums are too electronic, the vocals too precise and reserved, the bass too absent, for this song to rock in any sense of the word.
"This World Is Made of Paper": Guitar takes over at the outset of this song, along with quarter-note cowbell. Yes, I've seen the SNL skit with Christopher Walken. No, it's no longer funny.
The verses of this song dance, but the chorus features almost military snare drumming and syncopation that just rock. It also contains a completely average keyboard solo and breakdown, but the chorus is solid enough to balance this. Ryan Allen almost sounds pretty toward the end, in fact.
"Cobra Feet": Sweet, sweet bass dominates the verses in this song, which I think is a great closer. Catchy singalong chorus, not too much keyboard, it's really cool.
The bridge is worth sharing:
Who picks up the roadkill when it's dead?
Who reads a book they can't understand?
Why is blood blue, when we see red?
Who understands a thing I just said?
Moving on, the chantlike chorus leads to a guitar solo followed by a bass breakdown that allows the album to sort of peter out rather than crash. It ends with another peppy cheer: "A-w-e, s-o-m-e: Awesome! Totally!" It's cute.
Grade: B
Summary: Crazy, high-energy rock without being silly or painfully hardcore. Perhaps a little simplistic as far as keyboards and drums go, but this is covered by vocals that are constantly catchy and interesting. Misses on only a few tracks, and hits hard on the others.
Sounds like: At the Drive-In's Acrobatic Tenement with a real singer; Of Montreal's fastest songs with double the bass; Franz Ferdinand if they were ever excited about anything; Q and not U dances while Saves the Day lets the bass play (and stops being so emo).
Track listing:
1. Better Safe Than Safari
2. Eat This City
3. 198090 (Aquatic Cupid's)
4. Harpoons of Love
5. Enough About Me, Let's Talk About Me
6. To: Skulls
7. From: Skulls
8. Bodies Adjust
9. This World Is Made of Paper
10. Cobra Feet
Thunderbirds Are Now! page at French Kiss Records website
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