3. Thank You

First published in Plan B # 34

The members of Thank You – Jeffrey McGrath, Michael Bouyoucas and Elke Wardlaw – met whilst working at The Charles, an art house movie theatre in Baltimore. “I think we thought we were 3 reasonable people amongst hilarious jerks and bastard people…probably still do”, Michael says now.

Indeed: Thank You look eminently reasonable – urbane, mature (at least by the juvenile standards of ‘alternative’ culture), intelligent, and certainly not the types responsible for the agitated dynamics and scratchy, broken glass textures of Terrible Two, their new album (and first for veteran indie label Thrill Jockey). Reviews for their first album, last year’s World City, invoked the spirits of No Wave and post-punk, the patron saints of anxiety, death-wish nihilism and musical affront: The Fire Engines, The Contortions, Mars. A perfect example of how narrow the music press’ frames of reference are. City Paper reviewer Jess Harvell’s other suggestions, put in as afterthoughts, lead somewhere closer: the fiercely inclusive Art Ensemble of Chicago, the alien rhythms and colours of non-Western music, the angular, energy-saturated structures of The Ex.

Forming a couple of years after meeting, the band got to know “almost every band or musician in Baltimore”, eventually putting out World City on local label Wildfire Wildfire. They amassed a reputation for live shows that are, in Michael’s words, “completely overwhelming and psychotic in the best way possible”. And though their work might be outwardly anxious and challenging, on stage they have “the most immediate and penetrating rapport possible... not just within the band but with the people watching and listening as well”, something that comes over in the electric-shock urgency, telepathic interplay and deft structural tricks on Terrible Two.

Their polyamorous relationship with music has been the binding force in the band’s friendship since they first met: “We all love music so much...and it grows and changes all the time and there's no limit to what we like… We turn each other on to different things and make CDs and tapes for each other all the time... There's way too much throughout history to fall in love with.” Beginning from the position of music fans, rather than practitioners – “before playing together [we] bought instruments and just went at it” – gave the band the courage to try what they like. Often, not knowing any better is the best route to new sounds, something the splintered timbres and structures – think Minutemen’s turn-on-a-dime segues – of Terrible Two testifies to, but also its “unconventional” approach to lyrics – studiously minimal, delivered in off-mike shouts and chants – and instrumentation, with whistles, organ, sampler and percussion in addition to the standard bass/guitar/drums, and each member playing at least two instruments. “Our mindset is if you want to use an instrument in a song you just buy that instrument and get to work... I didn't have the faintest idea what to do with them before I bought them, but then I had them and just put them in songs...”

Much of the inheritance of the No Wave and noise-rock that soaks into Thank You is a practised sneer of obliquity that cloaks a lack of any real content or emotion; by contrast, the band’s work is welcoming and accessible, just on their own terms. The lyrics, Michael insists, are “not nonsense”, but just “cryptic enough to be interpreted any way the listener sees fit”. He continues, “every part of that album has an emotion behind it and resonates with us personally...Every lyric, guitar, organ and drum part has something of ourselves invested in it.” Listening to a test pressing, he was struck by “how panicked it sounded”, but feels that “there's also some great joy and hope in there too” – and, indeed, there are some moments of real wracked beauty on Terrible Two, from ‘Embryo Imbroglio’, where serrated treble guitars duck nimbly around vocal chants and a rhythm section out of Agharta-era Miles Davis, to the closing title track, which begins with organs that sound as if beamed in from space, and rises through thrashing percussion to a melancholic motorik swirl (“Every time we play it or I hear it I get this incredible sinking feeling”.) The song titles and lyrics are connected by a theme of pregnancy and children (which was “completely subconscious”, apparently); since finishing it, “unusual things have happened in our lives concerning birth”, from Jeff becoming a prospective uncle to label owner Bettina getting pregnant with twins. There’s no tiresome avant-punk misanthropy here, just a celebration of the possibilities of life and sound. Love and reasonableness, in other words.