On April 12th, I made the three or so hour eastward trek from Pittsburgh to Millersville, PA, which is in the area of Lancaster, to see Thursday for the second time this year. This time around it was in a small club called Phantom Power instead of a medium sized theater like the Roxian.
When Thursday announced this weekend run of small club shows, I was still reeling from the impact that their show with Rival Schools had on me back in January so I was determined to get to one of these shows. Tickets were purchased the minute they went on sale, a copilot was enlisted and logistics were nailed down.
I will always take the opportunity to see a band that usually plays in front of at least a thousand people play in front of an audience of a few hundred. There is a very different energy in the room from both the band and the crowd in those instances and it has always been worth it to be in the room when it’s happened. And given my renewed fascination with Thursday, there was no way I was going to miss out on seeing them play in a tiny sweatbox of a room.
The day before the show, Thursday announced the release of their first new music in over ten years with the single “Application For Release From The Dream.” The band was finally free and clear of any contractual or legal obligations and found themselves in a place where they could start doing things on their own and decided to do just that.
Being completely DIY and self reliant creates a certain amount of portability and freedom for a band. There are fewer braindead ten percenters involved saying “No” because they don’t have a creative bone in their bodies and that things can’t be done in a way that the actual artists envision. Not every idea will pan out but the ones that do make it all worthwhile and I can’t wait to see what Thursday gets up to now that they are able to do what they want.
The song was being rolled out at 12:01 am in each time zone so first thing Friday morning I forked over a dollar for a download and fired up the stereo. Upon first listen, I was floored. After repeated listens over the following days, it’s easily in the top five songs that Thursday has ever written.
“Application For Release From The Dream” didn’t sound like a back to basics or a return to form type of song. It was more along the lines of everything that Thursday has done well over the years was jammed into one four and a half minute song and all of those elements clicked when they were put together. When bands do that it doesn’t always work but Thursday crafted a finely honed sword with this one and it fucking cuts. It cuts hard. The song felt very much like a mission statement or a proclamation than anything else.
Driving to Phantom Power from the hotel was very unusual for me. I’m used to bombed out industrial areas or rundown urban areas that are on the brink of gentrification for the majority of places I end up in for shows. This was all back country roads and farm land that somehow led to a residential neighborhood. There was a chicken coup at the far end of the venue’s parking lot.
Without a doubt I felt like I was in foreign territory. The quasi-suburban/rural areas in this country always trip me out with all of the shopping centers surrounded by highways and pastures. Capitalism is relentless and always finds a way. At least a Sheetz was spotted between the venue and the room so the quest for post show breakfast was solved.
I didn’t plan on dropping a ton of money at the merch table since I need another t-shirt or hoodie like I need another hole in my head. But I also didn’t plan on Thursday pressing up a stack of twelve inch singles with “Application For Release From The Dream” on both sides just for this weekend of shows. This record nerd had to walk with two of them because I am that kind of record nerd. One to listen to and one to keep on a shelf for some unknown reason.
After I made my way past the merch table and into the venue proper, I was immediately shocked by how small the room was and started laughing. The floor area was not much larger than my basement but the room was tall enough for a balcony. I did feel a slight twinge of sadness after seeing how small the room was and knowing the high level explosion that was about to go off. I would have loved to have been the stage/road manager for a show like this and I started to realize how much I missed those nights. Trying to keep a show from going off the rails in the midst of all the mayhem surrounding it was always a challenge but was also part of the fun.
I was also feeling very glad to have struck out on getting a photo pass because I would have had my ass handed to me trying to shoot down front which I clearly would have been dumb enough to do. Phantom Power was okay with people bringing in cameras without detachable lenses for whatever reason so a week before the show I picked up a small Canon handheld which somehow cost a lot more than my usual setup. The downside of the new camera was that I couldn’t get to a show beforehand to try it out so I figured out what I could with the settings and hoped for the best.
I made my way to the balcony and ended up perched on the end overhanging stage left. Watching the show and taking pictures from the press box vantage point was a great decision. I had perfect site lines and didn’t have to deal with too many people and their drunken behavioral issues.
Tim Kasher, from Cursive, opened the show. He not only opened the show, he opened the show about a half an hour before he was supposed to. He walked on stage, commented on how few people were in the room and started playing. After about three songs, the road manager came out and told him he started too early. Start time for the show was 8pm and he was out there at 7:30 which may have explained the absence of an audience. We all had a good laugh and he beat a hasty retreat to the backstage area.
Tim came back out about twenty minutes later and officially opened the show with a blazing solo set. As much as I’m all for the loud ruckus of a full band playing the Punk Rock, there’s just something about a person walking on a stage by themselves with a guitar and bearing their soul for half an hour or so that gets to me every time, when it’s done right. And Tim Kasher came correct. After an unexplained lapse, I will definitely be taking the time to get reacquainted with Cursive and Tim’s other bands in the near future.
Once again, Thursday brought the band Many Eyes along with them on a tour. Many Eyes was good when I saw them back in January but they were way better on this night. The miles of touring and amount of shows they’ve played since then have given the band confidence and has made them less tentative in their approach. There was a lineup change on guitar for this show so that may have also had something to with it.
And with what seems to be becoming an unsettling trend, Thursday almost had to pull the plug on the show. Their touring sound engineer ended up falling ill but Phantom Power’s house engineer was up to the task. The band had to fight through a slew of technical issues while they were setting up their own gear. Given the issues over the past three times I’ve seen them, it’s almost to the point where if some sort of difficulties aren’t occurring before or during their set, is it really a Thursday show?
Especially since Steve Pedulla’s guitar rig blew out the electrical circuit he was plugged into a few songs into their set. The power surge was bad enough that sparks came out of the unused outlets in front of the stage that were tied into the same circuit. There wasn’t a large staff of stagehands to assist and they only had one guitar tech holding everything down so everybody started chasing cables to try to figure out what blew out and to see if Steve’s gear still worked. The night felt less like a rock band that could fill theaters in most parts of the planet and more like a handful of guys from New Jersey just trying to play a show. The technical issues stripped away any sort of pretense that there might have been and completely grounded the band.
They opened with “At This Velocity” and the place went off. Watching the crowd sing along to every word while moving in one giant mass reminded me just how much people love Thursday. Feeling the intensity coming off of the crowd is something that I would have missed had I been on the floor with everyone else and so once again the decision to camp out on the balcony for the evening paid off in droves. When Thursday went into “Jet Black New Year” the small barrier in front of the stage started wavering back and forth to the point where I thought it was going to buckle.
They added a couple of other songs from City By The Light Divided to the set list since their past two tours were focussed on playing Full Collapse and War All The Time all the way through. I never gave that record more than a few listens back when it came out through no fault of its own. It was mainly due to the circumstances in my life at the time that kept me from getting too far into that album. That’s one of the great things about music. It’s always there when we’re ready for it. I can now go back to that record and get reacquainted with it along with Common Existence and No Devolucion.
I made sure to pay more attention to Norman Brannon’s playing this time. Not only is he the mastermind behind the zine/website Anti-Matter, he also played guitar in the band Texas Is The Reason. Along with many other bands, Texas Is The Reason was a blind spot for me that I’m working on filling in.
Thursday put together what I would definitely consider to be a greatest hits set that was all killer and no filler. After “Understanding In A Car Crash,” they went off stage before the fake encore and came back out to play “Application For Release From The Dream.” They had to have been practicing that song for a while in soundchecks and rehearsals. Thursday hit that song with a familiarity that made it sound like anything but a new song. And if this is any indication of the direction that they’re heading, I can’t wait to hear what’s next.
There was some sort of emo package tour announced shortly after this show that made me think I could see Thursday for a third time this year but I will probably end up not going. I could give a shit about any of the other bands that are playing and the show is at the worst large venue that Pittsburgh has to offer. Going to see Thursday and then bailing is also out of the question due to the inevitable hassle of the venue. Hell, I made the decision to drive two hours north to see the Descendents and the Circle Jerks in Cleveland instead of driving twenty minutes from my house for the same show because of how awful the place is.
I’m sure there will be another tour announced around the same time as the eventual album announcement is made so I won’t worry too much about sitting that one out. I’ll keep the car gassed up and ready to point in whatever direction I need to head towards.
