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[MÖBIUS STRIP POP] You could be forgiven for thinking the discography of the Thermals follows a traditional arc—each successive album does seem more honed than the one before, sanding down the immature edges of Thermals-ness as it approaches a platonic ideal. But with the release of seventh album We Disappear, though it feels like they're moving forward, it's clear the trio's trajectory resembles something closer to a loop.
For Portland's garage heroes, after nearly 15 years together, time really is a flat circle—which means that We Disappear is exactly as long (half hour), exactly as polished (like the best major-label mall punk pre-Y2K), exactly as effortlessly great as should be expected from Hutch Harris, Kathy Foster, and Westin Glass at this point. Like 2013's Desperate Ground did referencing the band's lo-fi Sub Pop beginnings, We Disappear is something new that acts like something old. It specifically returns to 2009, when Now We Can See clarified their sound like a glaucoma operation, unveiling what was a fully realized power-pop band all along. It makes sense then that seven years later, on the gnarled epic "The Great Dying", Harris sounds as nascent as he always has claiming, "The words we leave/Will be believed/They will be clear." They aren't alluding to other music for inspiration anymore, they're looking only to themselves, folding back into their canon, full-on Möbius stripped.
We Disappear is wracked with thoughts of immortality, of the ways in which we, as humans and artists, both belie and embrace that. Opener "Into the Code" breathlessly lays out the stakes of being in a working band still trying to live up to Internet fame ("Every stone/On every road/Into the code") while each track after, from the melancholic bounce-off of "My Heart Went Cold" to comparatively glacial coda "Years In A Day," chips further away at the notion that their best years are behind them. They aren't: Those years are right now, and We Disappear is exactly as wonderful a Thermals record—meaning, really dependably so—as every one before and every one to come. DOM SINACOLA.
HEAR IT: We Disappear is out March 25.
Willamette Week