Archives with tag: killrockstars

Portland, Oregon's The Thermals have carved out a beautiful niche in the punk-pop world over the last 10 years, but it hasn't always been the easiest road to glory. In 2010, The Thermals teamed up with Death Cab For Cutie's Chris Walla to create their fifth studio album, "Personal Life." Both songs in this session are featured on that album, and as Pitchfork.com says, they are "pretty damn catchy!"

In 2009, The Fiery Furnaces released two album, I'm Going Away and Take Me Round Again - an album full of reworked, rearranged, rewritten versions of the songs from I'm Going Away. When the band joined us, they performed two tracks from I'm Going Away and another from their 2007 release Widow City.

Justin Ringle's songs sound like the soundtrack to Flannery O'Connor stories: emotive, dark music that feel like they should be sung in abandoned old churches set against dark stormy skies. His solo work under the name Horse Feathers attracted the attention of fellow Portlander Peter Broderick of Norfolk and Western who lent his arrangement talents to Ringle's lyrical talents. On cold winters nights like these, there is no better band to sit down with than Horse Feathers. Their stark, contemplative music is the kind that lends itself so well to quiet, thoughtful nights by a warm fire with a hot drink. We caught them last year as they came through town to play songs from their latest recording House with No Home on Kill Rock Stars.

After leaving Sub Pop Records, The Thermals' most recent album, "Now We Can See," was released this past April through new label, Kill Rock Stars. This fourth album is being billed as a re-introduction or re-birth for the band, but behind all the sweet melodies, catchy hooks and sing-a-long choruses, it carries many of the same explorations of life, death, religion and politics. "Now We Can See" was produced by John Congleton (Explosions In The Sky, Polyphonic Spree). Laundromatinee.com presents two acoustic versions of songs from that most recent album.