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www.churchonthursday.com
Thursday
War All The Time
Victory Records
2003
Lumping Jets To Brazil, Dashboard Confessional and
Thursday together as "Emo" is as stupid
as the corporate attempt during the late 70's and early 80's to put a polite
(and, theoretically, popular) face on punk by grouping the Talking Heads,
Devo, The Jam and The Clash together as "New Wave" bands. What is
"Emo" anyway? It just seems like a categorization for pseudo-intellectual
backpack-wearing punk kids. Anyway, you can thank the supreme deity of your
choice that Emo is dead--or at least removed from common usage in underground
music vernacular.
If you had to label New Jersey's Thursday as anything, it would be Post-Post Punk. The energy is of punk is there, but punk's angry dogma has been replaced with, um, emotion. The title of this CD, War All The Time (sounds like a slogan for the Bush campaign), might lead some to conjecture that Thursday is projecting outward, but the lyrics reveal a band focused far more inward.
At best, the lyrics approach poetry ("I'm on display/with the butterfly and scarecrow/with the smiles of picket fences"). At worst, they seem to revel in ambiguity ("Im on display/with the butterfly and scarecrow/with the smiles of picket fences"). No, that wasn't a typo.
What Thursday is doing musically isn't new--recalling Rites of Spring, Dag Nasty and Jawbox--but try telling that to your average teenage consumer. Although Thursday isn't doing anything new, they are doing it well. Jaggedly melodic guitars, vocals that literally range from a whisper to a scream and a great big major label budget to record with, which makes it all sound perfect--sometimes a little too perfect.
Overall, War All The Time comes across as a much more honest allegory of underground music than Good Charlotte or Sum 41. I like War All The Time, but I wouldn't want to hear War All The TIme all the time--only when I'm feeling miserable inside and want to subdue the outside world so I can mire myself in an interior realm of melancholy.
For all you "Emo" kids (or whatever you call yourselves now), take the Dashboard Confessional CD out of your satchel, give it to your parents and tell them it's the new James Taylor album. Then, experience the brutal introspection of Thursday until the pain of not being understood by your parents, peers and pets is drowned out.
--Felix
Thursday