{"id":41698,"date":"2009-09-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-22T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/now-we-can-see\/"},"modified":"2009-09-22T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-22T00:00:00","slug":"now-we-can-see","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/now-we-can-see\/","title":{"rendered":"Now We Can See"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The Portland, Oregon-based Thermals recorded their debut album on a four-track cassette machine. The abominably bad sound quality perfectly fitted the thirteen raw punk songs on <i>More Parts Per Million<\/i>. On their following albums they gradually exchanged the lo-fi sound for a more polished kind of punk. Their third record, <i>The Body, The Blood, The Machine<\/i>, was just as authentic as their first one despite the fact Hutch Harris\u2019 voice didn\u2019t sound like Johnny Rotten through a cell phone speaker anymore. <i>Now We Can See<\/i> picks up where <i>The Body, The Blood, The Machine<\/i> left off. Unfortunately, it isn\u2019t as good.<o:p><\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The album opener, \u201cWhen I Died,\u201d is quite catchy but not very memorable. The title shows lack of inspiration (\u201cWhen I Died,\u201d \u201cWhen We Were Alive\u201d and \u201cWhen I Was Afraid\u201d have no connection except from the titles). The first three tracks of <i>Now We Can See<\/i> are set at very similar tempos and chords which cause the first ten minutes to be unpleasantly plain and dull. Fortunately the fourth track, \u201cNow We Can See,\u201d saves the day. The incredibly catchy title track is one of the best songs on <i>Now We Can See<\/i>. \u201cAt The Bottom Of The Sea\u201d the album\u2019s slowest song, is quite beautiful. It sounds like it was written by The Walkmen and that\u2019s not a bad thing. It provides a welcome six minutes of rest after nearly fifteen minutes of violent power pop. \u201cWhen We Were Alive,\u201d is in my opinion one of the album\u2019s best tracks. Its two minutes of straightforward but very awesome post punk remind me a lot of \u201cA Pillar Of Salt\u201d (which appeared on <i>The Body, The Blood, The Machine).<o:p><\/o:p><\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><i>Now We Can See<\/i> is not a bad album at all. It does contain some great songs and the Thermals\u2019 front man Hutch Harris\u2019 lyrics are quite clever. Their sound still reminds me of a less sophisticated Sonic Youth with a hint of Sex Pistols, Walkmen and Dinosaur Jr.<o:p><\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><i>The Body, The Blood, The Machine<\/i> was better but <i>Now We Can See<\/i> is a solid pop-punk record that leaves me with high hopes for the future. The Thermals can do even better and I\u2019m pretty sure they will.<o:p><\/o:p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":30063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8462],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-41698","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-thermals","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41698"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}