Gillingham, Kent, UK, By Mikey:
[email protected]) - Each week I preview an album which I think deserves a listen to and if it's worth to buy, I will cater for all tastes of music from R'n'B to Rock, Hip hop and Pop. To start with I begin with The Thrills, at the end of the page, you will find all future album releases, but I don't do requests, which spoils the thrill of the chase, let me surprise you.
The Thrills - So Much For The City (Virgin)
Release Date: 30 June 2003
If you're too young to remember The Beach Boys, newcomers The Thrills have a handy collection of west coast beach music to help you catch up. If their name suggests another New York garage act, the record disproves such notions. And no matter that they're Irish, for these days anyone can sing about California as if they've always lived there.
The first two songs are named after resort towns just south of San Francisco, and the album's lyrics are peppered with references to sun-kissed beach paradises like San Diego. They even venture over the Nevada border to pay homage to Vegas. The music is largely upbeat and catchy, and the vocals fragile (or weak, depending on your point of view). Throughout, the ghost of Brian Wilson haunts them utterly.
It's not all happy-clappy fluffy bliss though - this is a band keen to remind their listeners that there's a bad side for every good, and Hollywood Kids is it. A laconic, faintly morose send-up of California's youth culture, it nevertheless breezes by before the lyrics can spoil the surfer's beach fire party that is the rest of the record.
Yet there's the niggling suspicion that this is all a tad manufactured. The music is inoffensive and pleasant to hear, but there's nothing here that's remotely original. It sounds like a Beach Boys tribute record. It harks back to a Surfin' USA time when most of The Thrills' members hadn't even been conceived.
For all the jauntiness of Big Sur, where they even name check The Monkees, Santa Cruz and Deckchairs and Cigarettes, groundbreaking this record is not. What marks it out is its big sound, full of lovely arrangements, and spot-on sing along melodies that makes it perfect for summer. In its own right it's a pleasing record - and at the end of the day that's what counts.
TRACK LISTING:
1. Santa Cruz (You're Not That Far)
2. Big Sur
3. Don't Steal Our Sun
4. Deckchairs And Cigarettes
5. One Horse Town
6. Old Friends, New Lovers
7. Say It Ain't So
8. Hollywood Kids
9. Just Travelling Through
10. Your Love Is Like Las Vegas
11. 'Til The Tide Creeps In/Plans
Future Album Releases
July 14
Manic Street Preachers - Lipstick Traces
Lisa Marie Presley - To Whom It May Concern
Sinead Quinn - Ready To Run
Various Artists - Hits 56
July 21
Kym Marsh - Standing Tall
Super Furry Animals - Phantom Power
Various Artists - Now That What's I Call Music! 55
July 28
The Coral - Magic And Medicine
August 4
Triple Eight - Heavy W8
August 11
Eva Cassidy - American Tune
Lisa Maffia - First Lady
August 18
Alien Ant Farm - Truant
Kosheen - Kokopelli
Stacie Orrico - Stacie Orrico
August 25
Richard X - Presents His X Factor Volume One
September 1
Kelly Clarkson - Thankful
Lemonescent - Unconditional Love
September 8
Abs - Abstract Theory
Limp Bizkit - TBA
Elvis Presley - Second To None: The Greatest Hits
TLC - Greatest Hits
September 15
Starsailor - Silence Is Easy
September 22
Dido - Life For Rent
Siobhan Donaghy - Revolution In Me
September 29
Lene - Surprise
