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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 13, 2011)
music Hot Live Finally. In 2006, The Thermals stopped in Eugene while touring for their taut, pointed album The Body, the Blood, the Machine, playing to a relatively small but disproportionately delighted WOW Hall crowd. They’ve not been back since, though those of us with a slight obsession have had plenty of opportunities to see the band in Portland. Two shows in one day at last fall’s Musicfest NW couldn’t dull my enthusiasm for seeing The Thermals play. It’s not just that the band’s literate, intense yet playful songs — not pop-punk, but part pop, part punk and all built to carry singer-guitarist Hutch Harris’ distinctive yelp — are best listened to with the focus and immersion a concert setting can offer. The Thermals are the perfect live band: Harris, scowling and wiry, his lyrics full of contradictions and phrases that sum up ideas bigger than the three-minute songs seem able to contain; bassist Kathy Foster, bouncing slightly and smiling a strangely calm smile; and drummer Westin Glass, a hyperactive Muppet whose perpetual shit-eating grin and tendency to sing along, unmiked, adds an extra layer of infectiousness to songs already spiked with singalong choruses and dynamic shifts. Personal Life, the Thermals’ 2010 release, opens with an impossibly wistful, crunchy guitar. “I’m Gonna Change Your Life” builds the promise of a relationship with lines that alternate hope and pain: “I’m gonna change your life / I’m gonna leave my mark / We can lie in the light / We can wander in the dark.” Harris lines up possibility and bleakness, bitterness and love, in perfect pairs over the record’s 10 tracks; you get “I Don’t Believe You,” forceful and defi ant, and then “Only For You” a few songs later, and neither is as simple as the title suggests — which is par for the course where The Thermals are concerned. The Thermals, White Fang and The Blimp play at 9 pm Friday, Jan. 14, at the WOW Hall. $12 adv., $14 door. — Molly Templeton MONDAY S AT 7PM 4 PM - 2:30 AM DAILY 115 W. BROADWAY jamesons-bar.com 28 JANUARY 13, 2011 EUGENE WEEKLY WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • BLOGS.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM
