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- Summary: Portland's indie-punk trio's fifth album is full of fist-pumping rock anthems about relationships and regret.
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- Record Label: Kill Rock Stars
- Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock
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Top Track
| Never Listen to Me | |
|---|---|
| Follow my lights Follow my leads Never listen to me Never listen to me Fall by my side I only mean to deceive Never listen to me Never listen to... | See the rest of the song lyrics |
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Score distribution:
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Positive: 18 out of 27
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Mixed: 9 out of 27
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Negative: 0 out of 27
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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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Newly aching but still introspective, the Thermals remain a revelation.
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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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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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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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Dec 22, 2010Earworms are decidedly less abundant than normal, though, sad to say.
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There isn't a song here that truly rises above the rest, and nothing here is as offensive as anything you'd hear at a stop on the Warped Tour.
Score distribution:
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Positive: 3 out of 3
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Mixed: 0 out of 3
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Negative: 0 out of 3
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Sep 27, 2010
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Sep 7, 2010
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Sep 10, 2010
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