Indie rock can come across sometimes as … well … kinda wimpy. And as much as we like sweet, heartfelt ballads or off-kilter pop experiments, sometimes you just want to ROCK. So, last weekend, while the indie world converged on the South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, we headed north to Indianapolis to check out two of the genre's more ferocious specimens: Bush-blasting garage-punks The Thermals and America's greatest bar band, The Hold Steady.
Appropriately enough, the evening began with an apocalypse. Upon taking to the stage, The Thermals unleashed "Here's Your Future," their portrait of a right-wing fundamentalist dystopia. Sounds like standard punk material, right? But here's the thing: It's also catchy as hell -- a fact evidenced by the hipster heads compulsively bobbing around us. Now, with their third and most acclaimed album, The Body, The Blood, The Machine, The Thermals are gaining attention as much for writing deadly sharp hooks as for their message. And talking to front man Hutch Harris, it sounds like the former is going to take priority. Hutch said that he's considering moving away from the political focus of Body, Blood and its predecessor, 2004's Fuckin A.
"I kind of want to make a record that specifically doesn't have something like that, something that's more about the songs …" unlike Body, Blood, Hutch said, "where it's just kind of too heavy for such simple songs."
