The Thermals are breaking up. Hutch Harris, Kathy Foster, and Westin Glass have decided to call it a day, issuing the following statement:
We are officially disbanding. After 15 years and 7 records, we feel our band has reached far beyond our initial expectations and goals, and are stepping away from it while we still cherish it. We traveled further, soared higher and played louder than we ever dreamed, and we now look forward to a new chapter in our lives, our art, and our friendship. We would like to thank all the great labels who have released our records, all the amazing people who have worked so hard for us, and most importantly our fans, who we consider to be some of the smartest, sweetest and most compassionate people in the world. We love you, and we hope to see you again some day.
Originally formed in 2002 by Harris and Foster following early folk recordings as the duo Hutch and Kathy, the band’s first album “More Parts per Million” was released on Sub Pop Records in 2003. The band rotated through several percussion players, ultimately recruiting Glass in 2008. The Thermals’ last album “We Disappear” came out in 2016. That same year, the group performed in support of then-Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders at a rally in Portland.
The Portland trio called it quits this week, but for many, they leave behind a fiery legacy that can’t be put out.
The Thermals wrote one Perfect Record and like one thousand other great songs, all before the pop-punk revival was a socially acceptable thing, The Body, The Blood, The Machine by The Thermals. its orange and red cover, all thanks to an incendiary anthem I’d heard called “Here’s Your Future.”
The first time I heard “Here’s Your Future” was quickly followed by the twentieth time I heard “Here’s Your Future.” It’s a short tune, In it, frontman Hutch Harris climbs an apocalyptic pulpit to act as the voice of a tyrannical, punishing Christian God who floods the world before lighting it aflame with a sneering indictment: “Here’s your future. It’s gonna rain.”
Legend has it, Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard heard The Thermals’ demo and got them in touch with Sub Pop. There, they released the scrappy statement of purpose More Parts Per Million (2003), the gut punching Fuckin’ A (2004) and immortal hellraiser The Body, The Blood, The Machine (2006). They then jumped to Kill Rock Stars, recruited Westin as their permanent drummer, and released their deepest, most existential record Now We Can See (2009) and the intimate, slightly experimental Personal Life (2010). They made their final home with Saddle Creek and released the lean Desperate Ground (2013), and, as their surprise finale, the suspiciously titled We Disappear (2016). It’s a shame. The Thermals are a hell of a band to lose at a time when righteous indignation from a young generation is offering the greatest push toward progress.
In between records, they toured the world and led sweaty crowds in clubs to scream back several memorable lines of righteous indignation and political outrage, including:
– “They can tell me what to read / They can tell me what to eat / They can beat me and send me the bill / But they tell me what to feel?/ I might need you to kill!”
– “Our enemies lie dead on the ground and still we kick”– “Pray for a new age / Pray for information / I can hope, see? / Even if I don’t believe”
Their main and best mode was loud and fast, but their lyrics—even at their most blunt—kept a sense of nuance: The Body, The Blood is most definitely a middle-finger to theocratic political tendencies, but it’s also a healthy dose of bloodied and bruised hope. It’s the same case for Now We Can See—maybe Harris’s highest lyrical accomplishment to date.
That album is, squarely, all about death, dying, and being dead. But a few spins reveals clever takes on the pitfalls of routine existence (“Liquid In, Liquid Out,” “When We Were Alive”), the clarity of hindsight (“We Were Sick,” “Now We Can See”), and the grace found in accepting our inevitable, eventual demise (“When I Died,” “You Dissolve”). This is the album they wrote nearly ten years before their breakup, mind you. It stands to reason that The Thermals were well prepared for their last hurrah long before we were.
“Eventually,” Harris explained during a live episode of the podcast Song Exploder in 2014, “what represented the Thermals the best was: Everything is kind of falling apart, and everything is just madness, but it’s more of a celebration of it as opposed to letting it get you down.” Given that quote, it makes complete that sense that, after releasing a generous and thankful joint statement announcing their end, Rather than let the world and its growing list of troubles burn them out, the trio is fading away, happy and celebrating, on their own terms. Here’s to your future, Thermals
The Fat Angel Sings 