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Let's Bottle Bohemia - The Thrills
by brdisley
When So Much For The City came out in 2003 it was something a bit different and I really liked it. That album found a summer niche and I listen to it every year. A year later and Lets Bottle Bohemia arrived and that year obviously was not enough time to write a good album. This feels like a set of songs that were written at the same time ... the last album came out and they went to the studio, polished up the sound and released it.
The sound of this album is sharper and richer, thanks to much higher production values the band earned with a solid debut album but the songs just aren't good enough to keep me listening, and it only remained in English charts for 4 weeks, suggesting I wasn't the only one who lost intrest.
The Thrills are an Irish indie/rock/pop band from Dublin and their sound is laced with East Coast vibes. I have always felt they have a Beach Boys feel, but an indie feel. Conor Deasy provides a unique sound, with strained vocals which always make me think of warm summer evenings. This album contains more of this signature sound, though does sound slightly different to So Much For The City. Let's Bottle Bohemia has a richer sound, due to the use of strings in the background on almost every song and the vocals do sound better and less washed out.
*Great Songs*
The album contains a couple of great songs, my favourite being "The Irish Keep Gatecrashing" a beautiful song, effectivly sticking a middle finger up to the bands critics who said they would not sustain stardom. The aforementioned use of strings is particuarly good here. "Curse of Comfort" is another stand out tune on which I feel Deasy's vocals are the strongest and "Tell me something I don't know" provides a promising start to the album with clangey guitars a good beat and catchy lyrics. I always feel The Thrills are at there best when they keep the tempo up and these three songs do just that. Unfortunately if you compare these tracks with the best from So Much For The City, Let's Bottle Bohemia pales in comparrison.
*Weak Songs*
Despite Deasy's pleasant vocals and rich stringed sounds, I find that a couple of slower songs don't do enough to keep the album going. "Not for all the love in the world" is the prime example. It is slow and boring and doesnt add anything to the overall experience of the album. Other offenders are "Our wasted lives" and "Faded Beauty Queens" which are untimately forgettable due to uncomfortable mixed pacing and poor lyrics.
*Good songs for background music*
The rest of the songs I would say are background music, that you don't really want to actively listen too, but provide relaxing and enjoyable 25 minutes when on in the background. "Saturday night" has a catchty (if repetitive chorus and "You can't fool old friends with limousines" grows on you, improving with each listen. This sound is text book Thrills - very listenable without doing a lot.
*VERDICT*
When I listen to this album I put it on in the car while driving or on the stereo at home while working and let is seep into my subconscious. The sound is usually very pleasant and at times you stop and think "What a good song" before letting it drift into the background again. Unfortunately these "Wow" moments are fewer than in the bands debut album and you are untimately feeling dissapointed with this rushed effort at maintaining the bands popularity. If you want a Thrills album, buy So Much For The City.
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So Much For The City - Thrills
by brdisley
The Thrills are an Irish indie/pop band out of Dublin, with Conor Deasy provideing a unique vocal style. They broke onto the English music scene with this fantastic record in June 2003. I really like the album, but there are a couple of weak songs and I find I can only listen to it in the summer.
*Vibe*
As mentioned, the ... album has a summer feel to it as Deasy's soft, light and warm vocals immediatly make you think of summer afternoons. The album has a roughly 50-50 split of slow and fast paced songs, and the topic of most of these is pretty much about being depressed but hopeful. he band were not havign a great time as they wrote the album and a number of songs are about losing or being denied things, yet looking hopefully to the future.
*Great Tracks*
The faster songs are definatly the picks of the album and were unsurprisingly the ones that were released as singles. "Big Sur", "Don't Steel Our Sun", "Santa Cruz (your not that far)" and "One Horse Town" are my personal highlights as each song has almost two sides to it with rhythem and style shifting back and forth mid-song. Other decent tracks are "Say it ain't So" and "Your Love Is Like Las Vegas" as these fly along at a delightful pace. The songs are about loss and regre it seems, with lyrics like "Don't go back", "Never should have settled down", "Tell me where is all went wrong" and the obvious "Don't steal our sun" examples of this vibe. Despite the underlying emotions, these songs are gun to listen to sort of like laughing through the pain.
*Slower Songs*
The slower songs on the album are more full of angst and do add some depth and emotion to the album but fail to his the heights of the more upbeat efforts. "Hollywood Kids" I find almost boring as it drones on about other having privilages while their band does not. "Deckchairs and Cigarettes", "Just Traveling Through", "Old Friends, New Lovers" and "Till the Tide Creeps In" are pleasant without really doing much as they meander through the same topics of regret and memory. They paint the background picture of the band on top of with the quicker songs can excel but I feel they fail to add enough to the album. The Thrills are definately at their best when keeping the pace up.
*VERDICT*
This is an album with some great songs that you will love, but also a number of slower efforts that are best as the background music to your summer. When the sun comes out I dash to my CD rack and grab this album, but it spends most of the year hibernating. A solid break through for an interesting band.
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Western Swing Get Together - Pee Wee King
by dangaroo
Pee Wee King & His Golden West Cowboys look and sound like the whitest country folk boys you ever could find in the USA, clean cut and in to wearing white Pee Wee King is a Polish-American born in Milwaukee in 1914, whilst the band leader himself deserves a lot of plaudits
I should point out that the band was made up of ... several talented musicians at various times including Redd Stewart and Eddy Arnold, in fact it was in Tennessee and Kentucky where the band gained notoriety and most of the band members hailed from that area.
A versatile band, they had a repertoire that spread genres and for straight-laced looking cowboys, these cats could really play, not only that but they also borrowed from black music, playing some ragtime numbers and incorporating jazz into otherwise traditional types of music that had been brought over from Europe such as polka and tango, there's quite an Irish folk sound to it as well.
This band were innovative in being one of the first county bands to introduce steel guitar, electric instruments and a wide array of musical instruments, my music reviews of this era 30s and 40s are usually blues , jazz or jug-stomping bands but the white musicians of the era also had something to offer and whilst the lyrics and vocals today seem rather geeky to listeners. Redd Stewart's vocals take you back to a time when vocalists could project their voices and are free of effects nor do they sound like they haven't been to the toilet for 3 weeks, the vocals aren't coarse, they are manly but gentle.
This album is a great introduction to Pee Wee King's band but unfortunately it misses out on some of the best tracks, which were undoubtedly a major influence on rock n roll, there's just one boogie song - Brother Drop Dead Boogie when "Plantation Boogie" and "Bull Fiddle Boogie" and "Ten Gallon Boogie" are equally if not better tunes. One of the things I really like about the band are their clever lyrics, Pee Wee and Redd wrote some great lyrics and often do it in an entertaining short rhyming way similar to George Formby, "Slow Poke" is a good example.
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