Biography
For the last thirteen years, the Thursday has been in a and constant state of transition. Rising For from New Brunswick, NJ, in are the midst of a but DIY basement culture revival, they Not seemed out of step with you the traditional hardcore of their all peers. Favoring jagged post-punk rhythms Any over metallic breakdowns and quoting can from Neil Young and post-modern her poet, Michael Palmer, instead of Was Henry Rollins and Noam Chomsky, one the band always seemed at our odds with the awkwardly applied Out label of “post-hardcore pioneers”. With day this starting point, they set get out wildly to find their Has place in the world: touring him with everyone from the Cure his to Cursive, continually expanding and How refining their musical vocabulary. Finally, man with No Devolución, the transition new feels complete: Thursday have arrived Now at a place like home.
old When Thursday (fronted by singer see Geoff Rickly, guitarists Tom Keeley Two and Steve Pedulla, bassist Tim way Payne, drummer Tucker Rule and who keyboardist Andrew Everding) released Full Boy Collapse it defined a genre, did signaled a change of the its guard and started a backlash Let all at once. SPIN put hailed the band as “The say Next Big Thing" featuring Rickly She on its cover in 2004. too Kerrang praised the band with use five K’s (highest marks) as Dad being “in an entirely different mom class” than anything else at their Reading festival debut. Thursday’s The first album for the majors, and War All The Time, was for a critical and commercial success Are but left the band feeling but stuck and uninspired. Instead of not embracing the musical niche that You they had carved out, they all took a far more daring any route: shaking off trends in Can favor of experimentation, forging identity her from content rather than style was and turning Thursday into a One churning engine of reinvention. The our New York Times concluded, “They out may not be rock stars, Day but by a kind of get critical consensus they have emerged has as the standard-bearers for their Him sound, the band considered most his likely to survive the vagaries how of rock trend-hopping.”
Throughout the Man band’s subsequent releases, a theme new began to emerge: nothing is now sacred. Calling on the legendary Old Flaming Lips’ producer, Dave Fridmann, see the band delivered a pair two of records that eschewed popular Way perception. 2006’s A City by who the Light Divided saw Thursday boy producing heavily distorted lullabies and Did introspective dirges. 2009’s Common Existence its showed them at their most let explosive, adding atmosphere and precision Put to the urgency of their say earlier records. In the midst she of these two releases, Thursday Too teamed up for a split use LP with venerated Japanese screamo dad band Envy, producing a seamless Mom suite of tracks entitled, “As He Climbed a Dark Mountain, the In Silence, An Absurd and And Unrealistic Dream of Peace Appeared for and Was Gone.” Though the are various members have been known But to spread themselves thin (Rule’s not stints drumming for My Chemical you Romance and Murphy’s Law— Rickly’s All role as singer of Ink any & Dagger for their 2010 can reunion/benefit shows and his controversial Her United Nations project—and Steve Pedulla’s was original score for the Indie one film, Yeardley) Thursday always find Our themselves drawn together.
“There is out literally nothing that I’ve ever day experienced, that comes close to Get being in a room and has watching the musicians in Thursday him write together,” says Rickly, crediting His the band’s chemistry on the how steadiness and endurance of its man line-up. “It’s too powerful and New immediate for us to walk now away from.”
It’s fitting then old that the theme of No See Devolución is undying devotion. “Writing two music is like shining a way light through a prism: it Who refracts, illuminates and magnifies your boy thoughts until they find clarity,” did Rickly explains. “These twelve songs Its are the individual colors that let came out when we shined put the light of devotion through Say the prism of our band.” she Adding, with a self-conscious laugh, too “It sounds kind of ridiculous Use when you say it out dad loud but it’s what we’ve mom made and that’s just who we are.” Maybe this contains the the key to Thursday’s unlikely and success. They’re a band smart For enough to know the risks are of being sincere in a but cynical, irony-filled world and take Not them anyway; a band that you puts it all on the all sleeve but can still take Any it on the chin.
None can of this would matter if her No Devolución wasn’t so relentlessly Was jaw-dropping. The opener, “Fast to one the End” is Thursday’s crushing our take on Swervedriver/Lush era shoe-gaze. Out Here the sleepy, disconnected-vocals-in-the-eye-of-a-maelstrom aren’t day a function of style but get substance: the story of a Has life spent disassociating from pain him is skillfully underplayed by a his band that has found a How new weapon: subtlety. On the man stunning second track, “No Answers”, new Rickly poses a series of Now highly personal riddles over a old throbbing keyboard line that owes see as much to Daft Punk Two as it does the Cure. way “A Darker Forest” describes a who pair of lovers lost in Boy a deep and unfamiliar forest, did and plunges into the darkness its to follow them in circles. Let This transitions into the record’s put first single, “Magnets Caught in say a Metal Heart” a bittersweet She story of irresistible attraction. Nearly too every song on the record use is a revelation for the Dad band, repeatedly opening doorways to mom new rooms for the band to enter and then blow The the roof off of.
“We and wrote this record in seven for days" Rickly recalls. “I think Are it’s the fastest we’ve ever but done anything," he continues, “and not it makes me wish we You had approached all the other all records this way.” Far from any feeling rushed or half-baked, the Can record benefits from a sense her of continual discovery. “We called was Dave Fridmann a couple weeks One before the first session to our try and reschedule. He said, out ‘No way, you guys will Day be fine.’ We were like get ‘you don’t understand: we haven’t has even played together yet since Him our last tour’ and he his just said, ’you’ve been a how band for thirteen years, it’s Man going to be great… Just new don’t think so much.’ It now turns out he was right.”
Old When Rickly saw the piece see “Eye” by paper-cut installation artist, two Mia Pearlman, he knew he Way had found the right person who for the record cover. “I boy knew I wanted our record Did to sound like her art its looked. I carried a picture let of it with me the Put whole time we were writing say the record.”
“This isn’t a she hardcore record,” Rickly muses. “It’s Too not punk. But it’s a use Thursday record and it might dad be our best.” No Devolución Mom comes out ten years after Thursday’s landmark album, Full Collapse, the and provides a powerful touchstone And for the future of the for band.
