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Though they should've rocked out a couple times for some variation, Personal Life is a good example of a band growing up without growing old.
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Personal Life is hardly a failure; much of it is excellent. But it's also missing that anger-meets-energy urgency that made the Thermals' early albums so undeniable.
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So song to song, Personal Life may not quite match up to its predecessors, but as a whole it is as nuanced and exciting a set as we've seen from the Thermals.
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Q MagazineDec 20, 2010Terse songwriting and Hutch Harris's emotionally strained vocals create a liberating sense of urgency--and there's something both modest and succinct about a 32-minute album in the age of infinite MP3s. [Dec 2010, p.115]
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Dec 22, 2010Where the intervening years have tempered that haste, this fifth album offers compensation in the form of their sharpest, most precise set to date.
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Under The RadarPersonal Life may not be the band's most immediate album, but it's their best, a deep intimate record that's ultimately uplifting, quietly offering assurance and comfort on its trip into the mysterious zone of love and mortality. [Summer 2010, p.80]
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Dec 22, 2010The Thermals continue to give three chords and the (difficult) truth a good name.
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To its credit, the disc sounds like a band tweaking its signature noisemaking and groping toward something new. That transition promises to be amazing, but Personal Life feels more like a weary shifting of the gears than a drive to a definite destination.
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Newly aching but still introspective, the Thermals remain a revelation.
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It's a sea change, in terms of the band's sound; their previous albums' hyper-political, sturm und drang punk fury is almost entirely gone, replaced by easygoing power-pop more akin to fellow Pacific Northwesterners Built to Spill. And this pump-the-brakes approach to songwriting yields some of their strongest, most emotionally resonant work yet.
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Alternative PressDuring the course of 10 catchy, snappy, lo-fi pop-punk songs, an incredibly personal, heartfelt narrative unfolds, full of ups and downs. [Oct 2010, p.120]
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Personal Life is absorbing and entertaining the first few times through, but many may not find it as engaging as the Thermals' best work.
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Fortunately, The Thermals like to venture into unfamiliar territory--songs sound more spacious when they need the breathing space; bass lines will override a song when guitars ought to blend in. And then there are the lyrical themes--listeners take their so-called simplicity for granted, provided they come up to the requisite standard of conceptual excellence.
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Like their other albums, it's a collection of spirited, guitar-forward tunes that remain upbeat, even when it seems like everything is falling apart.
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Kerrang!Jan 31, 2011Occasionally this album is just as you might expect, raucous and raw, but elsewhere it is the work of people who seem unafraid to sound afraid. A gem. [6 Nov 2010, p.52]
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Mar 3, 2011Where past efforts have been brash and speedy, this one takes its time and delivers messages of love(!) instead of messages of insubordination.
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There are rare glimmers here, but maturity sure is sobering.
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The Thermals may not change your life, as Harris promises on the opener, but they keep on issuing front-to-back fun albums like few other bands.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 6 out of 7
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Mixed: 1 out of 7
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Negative: 0 out of 7
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Sep 27, 2010
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Sep 10, 2010
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Sep 7, 2010