Photo credit: Summer Crane
Thank release their second – and first via Big Scary Monsters – album ‘I Have a Physical Body That Can Be Harmed’ on 8 November. The album promises to offer a satirical overview of the modern world and all its foibles, delivered against a noisy backdrop of techno squelch, smashed drums and intense riffs.
Stabbed synths and a buzz of feedback signal the start of opener ‘Control’, an in-your-face anthem that has a refrain of how we’re ‘gonna make it’. Recent single – and entirely prevalent to a whole bunch of society that will probably never hear it, and if they do think it’s celebrating their narrow-mindedness – is the fight pop of ‘Woke Frasier’: ‘I am the only one you can trust because I will never, ever go woke’; ‘Listen to me, skim reading the first three results on Google’.
‘Do It Badly’ has an angular punk edge that reminded us of labelmates Meat Wave and understandably venomous lyrics – ‘No longer a baby boy, but a baby man’ – and ‘Down With the Sickness’ falls more into The Fall/Yard Act/Art Brut talky sound as the band talk about things that feel normal when you’re a narcissist: ‘It’s called never, ever learning’. The Simpsons-referencing ‘Smiling Politely’ is another angry anthem with the words ‘I don’t know who you are but I don’t like your attitude’ being spat out with menace, while ‘Perhaps Today’ finds ruminations on the rapture being delivered against a wall of guitar.
‘Writing Out a List of All the Names of God’ closes the album with 3 minutes of frantic drumming and potent riffs. ‘Excuuuse me’; ‘Listen up, this is important’… There’s an urgency in what the band has to say – which is the case for all of this powerful record.
