Album Review: Thrice, Major/Minor, 2011 Vagrant Records
Major/Minor is the seventh full length from Irvine, California based quartet Thrice, produced by Dave Schiffman in LA who had previously worked with the band as an engineer and mixer on the albums Vheissu (2005) and Beggars (2009) respectively. In their thirteen years together Thrice have been uneasy sitting still or resting on their laurels, from the battering post-hardcore thrill-ride of albums The Illusion Of Safety (2002) and The Artist In The Ambulance (2003) with all their aggression and changing of time signatures, to the electronica influenced Vheissu and the progressive, concept album The Alchemy Index (2007/8) the band have defied categorisation into any style or genre. Despite this shifting temperament and attitude the band have taken care to refine and develop a unique ‘Thrice sound’ so that their particular use of harmony, intervals, intonation, sharp riffs and punchy rhythms is unmistakeable whenever all four members get together to record music.
True to form Major/Minor finds the band uneasy with its previous incarnations and looking to trouble and agitate these. There is a resistance and real tension that exists in this set of songs between the anxiety about the band that Thrice used to be and the possibilities of the band that they can be with slightly older, more experienced musical heads on shoulders (and more refined musicianship). Their first album was after all, perhaps in some premonition of today, titled Identity Crisis (2000/01). The youthful exuberance and outright combativeness of being just out of one’s teens, more than evident on that album, is a hat the band are quite right to choose to wear no longer now that they have all reached their early thirties, although they are not afraid to tap the lingering connection to that wild, flailing energy, the terse almost barked vocals and rampaging guitar and drums, albeit in a better considered, more mature, less in your face manner.
In this willingness to push the boundaries in their approach to creating music and their identity as a band, the quartet have been referred to as the ‘post-hardcore’ or ‘American Radiohead’. Thrice have had no interest in following one formula of songwriting once it has proved successful, often wrong footing fans and critics alike in their refusal to make the expected move.
There has always been an intelligence, articulacy, depth and eagerness to experiment in the band’s sound that has ensured they’ve remained a notch above their peers in the genres they have dipped in and out of. Weirdly, this assertiveness and uncertainty surrounding the band’s modus operandi is the thing that allows them to move on with confidence again on Major/Minor, which reflects the overall consistency and quality in this band’s back catalogue, with its commitment and integrity to songwriting craft; there is no filler on this album, each track is distinct from the last but shot through with the Thrice watermark.
All the songs here are as vital and intriguing as one another, whether it’s a vocal hook, a catchy guitar part, bass line or arresting drums. The jerky, wiry into silky smooth melodies and rhythms of ‘Cataracts’ would fit well on Rival Schools’ United By Fate and ‘Listen To Me’ is all towering intro before showcasing vocals and a thudding bass line.
Many of the songs on Major/Minor seem fascinated by sensory experience, particularly vision or lack of it, for which see ‘Blinded’, ‘Cataracts’, ‘Blur’ and also hearing, for which see ‘Promises’ (whose immensely catchy chorus intones ‘We are cowards and thieves, will we never turn to grieve the damage done, never see, never quake with rage at what we have become’), ‘Words in the Water’ and ‘Listen Through Me’. Maybe this has to do with the organic, undressed sound that the band are interested in these days (more on that shortly). All that said, Thrice’s sixth long player represents perhaps the most fluid transition from one album to the next.
There are some clear similarities to 2009s Beggars here, which many regarded as the band’s best work yet. Musically, tonally and in production values Major/Minor is a continuation of the stripped down sound, the same joining of introspectiveness and controlled aggression that worked so well on that previous album; but where use of things such as delay, compression, synth effects and a sometimes cryptic approach to lyrics was central to that album’s success, Major/Minor is an even more straight-forward, direct affair. The minimal use of effects or production tricks on the band’s instruments coupled with Dustin Kensrue’s genuine lyrics, (which as always in ideas and delivery are a cut above the standard and make this band such a joy), makes for a set of songs that are raw, natural, unguarded and on the level. The overall listening experience is of being present at an intimate, faultless live performance.
Kensrue has made no secret of his christian faith and the way this has been channeled into his lyrics, indeed many of Thrice’s songs contain re-workings of, or paraphrase biblical passages, but they are handled in a way that could never isolate the secular listener, having wider meanings that can be applied to other aspects and facets of life. This is a smart band, let’s not forget they also managed to rework e.e. cummings’ – (or should that be ‘E.E Cummings’, answers on a postcard) – poem ‘but if a living dance upon dead minds’ into a catchy number, and in ‘Wood and Wire’ wrote an astute, allegorical consideration of the death penalty that seems all the more relevant now due to the debate and outcry over the Troy Davis case this past week.
These songs may seem straight-forward but the simple seeming things often mask the great complexity and effort that allow them to be this way, and I’m sure Major/Minor was not achieved easily; the record is representative of a band making further expansions in musicianship, in terms of ambition, textures and scope. Kensrue’s vocals waver between sweet melody and gravelly near-scream; often, with the prominence of the vocal in the mix, it is the vocal hook that each track is built around; often this focuses the listener’s concentration and draws you in to the underlying layers of instrumental arrangement which seem to simultaneously struggle to separate and merge. The guitar work of Teppei Teranishi is more varied than ever – compare the brutal, bludgeoning riff of album opener ‘Yellow Belly’ with the alternately jubilant/searing and intricate melodies on penultimate track ‘Anthology’. Drummer Riley Breckenridge’s subtle playing again confirms his status as one of the best rock percussionists out there, often veering within the same song from restrained, jazzy, tight rhythms on snare and hi-hat that bristle with nervous energy, to all out torrents and monster chops using the whole range of his kit, ‘Call It In The Air’ for example. On bass his brother Eddie underpins everything with intriguing counterpoint or pedal notes as exemplified on album closer ‘Disarmed’ whose closing choral/instrumental crescendo into a plaintive, twinkling lone guitar seems a fitting place for Thrice to leave things this time out.
There’s a clear paradox in the title chosen by the band, which seems to play on the obvious simplicities we might assume to be inherent in those basic tonalities, the building blocks of music, but the surface tension stirred by yoking the two together hints at a more interesting, complex listen than that. The title also plays on the idea of musical freedom or compromise that often comes with belonging to either a major or a minor label, the band having shifted around early career before settling at Vagrant for their last four releases. Perhaps this title is also a nod towards the band’s status within their own genre, being by now reasonably far into their career. So, this is an album that does provide immediate melodic gratification, but its arrangements and structures will undoubtedly offer most to those who give the album time, space, and come back for repeated listens, through which Major/Minor’s accomplishment, its textures, and the band’s authority over their sound becomes more and more apparent.
by Simon Haworth