The Folly of Youth and A Thirty Something Perspective: The Thrills

I recently snagged the debut from The Thrills, So Much For The City, yet another buzz band. This Irish band has a singer whose voice is like Joe Pernice or Tahiti 80's Xavier Boyer cross-bred with Steve Forbert, with music that sounds as if it were vetted by a panel of MOJO magazine readers. Twenty-somethings show their appreciation for the classics, particularly the classics that came from the West Coast in the ‘60s.

What is striking to me about this record is the low level pretension of the lyrics. Rock and roll has always been, in large part, a platform for teenage and young adult expression. Because of rock and roll's direct nature, rebellion, frustration, dreams and love are often all expressed with unaffected rawness. Perhaps it's not poetry, but the sheer honesty often elevates rock to high low art or something along those lines.

In the post-Dylan era, rock wasn't limited to the primitive and simple. Poetry, at some level, entered the lyric equation. Of course, the best thing about this is how it greatly expanded how and what a lyricist could do with a rock song. However, since rock is always going to skew younger, these expanded possibilities served to indulge the worst tendencies of young adults.

I hope someday a sociologist (or whichever discipline would be appropriate) does a study to determine the age when hipsters reach maximum pretentiousness. I would hazard a guess that it's somewhere between 22 and 25. Humility is generally not reserved for those who have a head full of ideas and their whole lives ahead of them.

So young rockers, teeming with piss and vinegar, pick up guitars and make big statements. Who cares that their perspectives are limited by a lack of knowledge and experience. After all, talking about the journey often turns out to be more exciting than the trip itself. Once in a while, a young rocker talks big and turns out to be Bruce Springsteen or Joe Strummer. More often, it ends up sounding like Dashboard Confessional or Counting Crows. Overblown and laughable.

Listening to The Thrills couch their tales in words that make them sound, as my friend Dale said so well, "precious", I was taken back to when I was their age. I think Hothouse Flowers were my Thrills. The Flowers were fellow Irishmen, who came out of the Springsteen/Van Morrison mold. Nearly every one of their songs was sung as if the fate of the world depended on it, even if they were only nattering on about meeting a pretty girl. (Though, even as I get older, I find that the fate of the world sometimes does rest on a pretty girl). Listening to them now, I find a lot of the Flowers' debut to be hopelessly naive. Although a lot of the music still captivates, I have to wince (just a light wince, it's not like I'm listening to The Shaggs) at the words. Despite this shift in my perspective, the overall enthusiasm still manages to win me over.

The Thrills are much more low key than Hothouse Flowers. Yet I could easily see myself, if I were 22 rather than 38, falling one hundred percent under the spell they cast. Because, as with the Flowers, I would feel that they were expressing some of my own dreams, that their vision for life was equivalent to my own. It's a romanticism that generally erodes over time.
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Maybe as I get older, I don't believe in explosive excitement lurking at every corner. But I appreciate little things in life all the more. All this means is that The Thrills don't speak to me at one level. Their music can entertain me, although I'll never fully connect with it. This doesn't mean that I will just dismiss them lightly. Maybe they will end up having a lengthy career, and they will mature and speak to me more. Maybe not.

Regardless of what the future holds for them, I certainly recognize what chord they strike in their fan base. It's an analog to the previously mentioned Dashboard Confessional (who translates the sentiments of Journey power ballads into emo language – ugh) or Bright Eyes. It's the rare young artist who has sufficient perspective to write material that can apply to someone of the same age or someone a generation older. And even when The Thrills fail me at one level, their honesty and sincerity can at least make me empathetic.

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