CURRENT BIOGRAPHY
Times change, trends end and-especially in the realm of popular culture-fame usually doesn’t last much longer than its five-minute expiration date. Luckily, Thursday aren’t that kind of band. Even though the summer of screamo may be far from a footnote in the annals of music history, instead of making a last ditch effort to capitalize on the trend they helped bring to the mainstream, with A City By The Light Divided, the men of Thursday have once again transcended the genre, creating something vital and urgent!
But in order to truly understand the band’s new material, it needs to be put into context. Formed in
“One thing we realized on this record which was really liberating was that this is still our band,” says vocalist Geoff Rickly. “It may have gotten bigger than us, but we still own it and we can decide what we want to do with it.” However, for a while it looked like this record would never exist. Although the
In fact, in many ways, A City By The Light Divided is the album that saved Thursday. “We took four months off last year to decide what we wanted to do and how much of a commitment we wanted to make, and we all decided we wanted to do this full-time,” Rickly explains. “But in order to do that, we had to make a record that we think is fucking startling and amazing and beautiful and brilliant. If we don’t make something that destroys everything else we’ve ever done, we just can’t make another record.”
A City By The Light Divided is undoubtedly that album. Produced by Dave Fridmann at Tarbox Studios in Fredonia, New York., “At This Velocity” may be equal parts singing and screaming, but it’s anything but screamo. It’s aggressive, sure, but with its lilting half-time breakdown and shimmering keyboards, it’s also progressive-and accurately sets the tone for what follows it. In fact, if it weren’t for Rickly’s distinctive vocals, cynics would be hard-pressed to recognize the driving and impassioned “Telegraph Avenue Kiss” as a Thursday song (and not just because it features the most tasteful use of glockenspiel in recent memory).
However, it’s that kind of gradual growth which has defined the band from their humble beginnings as a hardcore band to the innovative rock act they’ve become today. And while Fridmann may seem like an unlikely choice for a band who still incorporate breakdowns and sing-alongs into their music, Thursday’s penchant for taking seemingly unorthodox chances is one of the reasons the band’s popularity hasn’t waned in the oast three years, while so many of the band’s more predictable peers have vanished into obscurity.
“Yeah, a lot of people were surprised we recorded with Dave instead of a ‘heavy’ producer,” Rickly admits. But listening to the disc, it’s obvious the man who layered sonic textures with groundbreaking acts like the Flaming Lips and Sleater-Kinney was the perfect person to combine Thursday’s eclectic influences-which range from instrumental acts like Explosions In The Sky to technical metal groups like the Dillinger Escape Plan to writers like Octavio Paz and Jonathan Lethem. The complete realization of all these seemingly disparate influences is what makes Rickly describe the band’s latest disc as “the album we tried to make with War All The Time.”
Let’s face it, “next big things” are generally overrated. The term itself implies impermanence; no one uses that phrase to refer to, say, a band like U2. And while Thursday are still relatively in the infant stage of their existence, that’s the kind of career trajectory they’re aiming for- A City By The Light Divided is just the vehicle bringing them on step closer to realizing that dream.
THURSDAY.NET BIOGRAPHY(OLD)
Few bands perfect their art the first time out. In fact, many spend their careers trying to get ‘it’ just right. Sometimes it works; sometimes, it’s futile. Other bands deliver their best effort in the form of their first album, yet nothing lives up to the initial blast. In Thursday’s case, the quintet was satisfied that they accomplished their musical goals on their first two albums. But rather than rest upon past glory and remake the same albums, Thursday, in effort to expand beyond its rather prolific past, poured everything into their Island Records debut, War All The Time. Thanks to the album’s challenging music, Thursday has gotten it right, again.
‘A lot of what we do is about our youth, and the burn of being a certain age. These are snapshots that can never be taken again,’ admits wiry frontman Geoff Rickly, whose slight build belies the full breadth of his passionate, intense delivery.
While Thursday’s music obviously appeals to younger generations, this is a band of old souls inhabiting young bodies, and thus, the music speaks to many audiences. This New Brunswick, NJ-based band was born of a love for music and basement punk rock shows, the culmination of a pair of high school friends who met their future bandmates at shows. The individual members were raised on left of center hardcore, which couples with Rickly’s appreciation for dark pop and 80’s British new-wave acts like The Smiths and The Cure. Thursday’s music shimmers with sincerity, but this is a troupe that will spontaneously quote lyrics of their hardcore faves in mid-conversation.
Thursday’s career kicked off when indie label Eyeball Records took notice of the band and released their debut, Waiting, in 1999. The breath-taking Full Collapse was released in the spring of 2001 through
Amidst this critical and commercial flurry, the band eventually signed to Island Records, and immediately started writing War All The Time. Thursday hunkered down, and wrote vigorously over the Christmas holidays. The band admits that during the writing process, a Sonic Youth/Godspeed You Black Emperor! style of guitar work evolved in their music. The band chose to keep tradition and to record once again with longtime producer Sal Villanueva and mixer Rumble Fish, who manned the boards for Waiting and Full Collapse.
War All The Time was not an easy album to make, but as with any worthwhile endeavor in life, the more work you put into it, the more it is appreciated. ‘We took a ton of chances - we’re at the 180 right now. I was sleeping at the studio,’ Rickly admits. ‘It was such a long process that at one point I thought ‘is this record meant to happen?’ Then, we played the songs back, and fell in love with them. While much of our previous work has been personal, this album doesn’t look back in the past tense, at what had happened, but at things still going on in the present tense. It’s not about closure or after the fact. It’s about figuring it out while it’s going on. The songs are tangled up in the process of living events now. And this is the first record we made knowing we want to do this for the rest of our lives, as musicians and writers.’ Guitarist Steve Pedulla recalls a bit of nervousness about the band’s future at the time. ‘I asked myself: Do we have it in us to do something better? I came to the conclusion that we did. If we didn’t, there would be no reason to keep doing music.’
Rickly continues, ‘The heart of what we do is loud, fast chaos, alongside pretty music with different ranges of feeling. For me, I wanted to engage songwriting from a more narrative perspective while still remaining personal. I didn’t want to be as obscure, where you could take things a million different ways.’
The specific War All The Time is not a political statement about bombs dropping from the sky, but of friction in relating to others. ‘Everything you do is conflict,’ chimes in Pedulla.
Thursday’s music is push and pull, tension and release, and sing-scream harmonies, with the songs functioning as modes of communication, where the band and its listeners exchange thoughts and feelings through the vibrations of the instruments and the lyrics. Regarding the songwriting for War All The Time, Rickly was focused on ‘marrying melody more to what I am saying. I wanted to be more visual, chaotic and noisy.’ With this vision, Rickly’s artful lyrics take on more of a folk-writer/storyteller personality and he takes listeners on a vivid journey with him.
On the total loss vs. fulfillment anthem ‘Between Rupture And Rapture,’ Rickly recounts a childhood friend’s suicide, and concentrates on being lost and confused, ‘where everything feels temporary, and as a child, I thought love would fill the void and save the day, but as I get older, I doubt that more.’ The crushingly pretty ‘Signals Over The Air’ examines human sexuality, and Rickly expounds, saying ‘In our culture, gender and sexuality identity is hidden or can be used to alienate you, instead of being the natural pure thing that it was meant to be. It’s like our version of PJ Harvey’s Mansize.’
On ‘Asleep In The Chapel,’ which questions faith in anything, the compelling title track, which references the growing pains of life, and the urgent look at dehumanization in ‘For The Workforce Drowning,’ (which will also be issued as a seven inch), Rickly places you in the story, right alongside him and you are challenged through Thursday’s honest, creative songcraft. While the songs are indeed complex, squalling with harmonic distortion and thick with leaden breakdowns, they are still digestible. They just require and ultimately demand your full thought and attention while listening. This is hardly. background music.
Says drummer Tucker Rule, ‘The new songs are hard for us to play. I love the way it turned out, but I have to get excited to play them live because they are so difficult.’ Guitarist Tom Keeley finishes, ‘The melodies won’t hit you over the head. There’s still the release of anxiety and the subsequent celebration.’ Thursday intentionally compressed its songs, to which Rickly explains, ‘We squeezed songs together and made them faster, with just as many parts that do as many different things, but are more explosive.
War All The Time is at once dense and redemptive. The metaphors, the stories, the melodies, and the breakdowns are skillfully, beautifully crafted. To win fans over with honest, youth-directed music is easy. To keep them is the challenge. With War All The Time, this won’t be a problem.
-Amy Sciarretto
FULLCOLLAPSE.COM BIOGRAPHY
What is it about
There must be something in the water; it seems that all of the freshest new bands have been budding from the famous
The band began as a closely-knit group of friends who channeled those unbreakable bonds into not only an idea, but also a sound. They started out playing shows in basements and garages for anyone who would listen. Very early in their career they were able to play with illustrious bands such as, At the Drive In, Boy Sets Fire, and Hot Water Music. Over the past two years their hard work and perseverance have built them a steadfast following. Their debut release, “Waiting” on
With their latest release “Full Collapse,” Thursday have created a sound that is unparalleled and unequivocally their own. Although still a young band, they write with the sincerity and insight of a band twice their age. Their music is a cathartic whirlwind of rhythmic melodies and heart stopping time changes that are unified amongst lulling vocal harmonies and besieging wails. Thursday can mesmerize their audiences in a way no other band in recent memory has been able to do. Undaunted by the toils of the music industry; Thursday brings a vibrant outlook to new music. “Full Collapse” is a beautiful movement of art and music. The listener is easily lulled into submission by the soothing guitars and hushed, supple vocals. Thundering guitar chugs and hair pulling screams jackknife any false sense of comfort. All of these turbulent twists and turns leave their listeners breathless and begging for more. Thursday’s music has an effect on its listeners; it not only moves them on a musical level, but it conjures up feelings and emotions that can only be captured through sincere music that comes from the outpouring of a dismal heart.
On the brink of a blossoming career, Thursday is charging ahead, full-force, ready to tour non-stop until the end of 2001 and beyond in support of “Full Collapse.” With the release of this record and a video debut on the horizon for them, the road ahead looks promising; the possibilities are endless.
OLDER BIOGRAPHY
Standing in a crowded room; you are but a shadow among flailing arms and a swarm unfamiliar faces. You feel like a stranger, but there is an under lying force that connects everyone in the room. Recollections of loss, despair, and the tribulations of just making it to the next day consume your thoughts. Only a band as emotionally charged and inspiring as Thursday can bring out these deeply seeded feelings.
Thursday’s guitarists; Tom Keely and Steve Pedula blend crunchy melancholic guitar riffs with Tim Payne’s charming bass lines and Tucker Rule’s multifaceted drum rhythms that unify to lay the groundwork to Thursday’s unique sound. Geoff Rickly then adds a turbulent storm of passionate vocal harmonies that without warning spark into a dervish of hair pulling screams that only a band as dexterous as Thursday can create.
Thursday got their start playing cramped shows in the legendary basement of
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