The Thrills
Teenager

The moment of the third test has arrived for the Irish band The Thrills as well, led by the talented vocalist Conor Deasy. The success of their previous albums "So Much For The City" and "Let's Bottle Bohemia" (ranked third and ninth in the UK Albums Chart respectively) and the excellent exposure of hits like "Big Sur", "Santa Cruz (You're Not That Far)", and "Whatever Happened To Corey Haim" encouraged an optimistic outlook towards the new effort by the Irish combo.

Commercially, the results were unfortunately rather disappointing (#48 in the UK album chart), but that doesn’t change the fact that, qualitatively speaking, the album is a good compendium of the "thrillsian" sound, with excellent callbacks to the aforementioned debut, surely thanks to the return of Tony Hoffer - who produced the debut - at the producer's desk (thus sunny melodies overshadowed by Conor's intense and suffering voice); we also find samples of the more autumnal sound of the second album.

If the opener "The Midnight Choir" would pop the eyes out of the sockets of the best R.E.M. (it's no coincidence that Peter Buck participated in the previous album in the beautiful "The Curse Of Comfort"), the album subsequently untangles the skein between hyper-summer atmospheres (indicative in this case are the melodic "This Year" and the first single, the melancholic "Nothing Changes Around Here"), beautiful guitar and voice numbers like "Restaurant", and hints at new, unheard influences (Keane, who spring out in "Lost Forgotten Song"). The sixties/cunning choruses of the vibrant "No More Empty Words" and the slow title track also catch the ear, where in the distance, the Coral of "The Invisible Invasion" can be seen, before the album closes with "Should've Known Better" (avoidable) and the diptych "There's Joy To Be Found/The Boy Who Caught All The Breaks".

A decent work, as we said, certainly not a peak like "So Much For The City" (and you won't find another "Big Sur" inside it), but rather a lovely range of sounds to enjoy while lounging around in these sadly cheerful summer days.

P.S. I apologize if I won’t be able to respond to any comments you may have as I am going on vacation and will not touch the computer until September. Bye to everyone.