The Thermals
Photo credit: Chelsea Mosher
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The Metro Club's a pit. A sweaty hole with sticky floors and those florescent lights that make your eyeballs go blue. It's fit solely for exchange students and underage drinkers but for some reason known only to the London gig mafia, all new bands have to play here. It's like that scene in the film A Man Named Horse where Richard Harris is hung up by his nipples as part of an initiation rite into the world of the Native American. The Metro Club is the London gig equivalent of those nipple hooks. Painful and seemingly unnecessary but you have to do it. Once you've endured the trial, you're in. Or, as it said in the last issue of Vanity Fair, "Honey, you ain't no goddamn band 'til you've played the Metro!" Actually, I made that last bit up but you have to play the Metro Club regardless of what Vanity Fair does or doesn't think.
Tonight it's the Thermals' turn to have a go. Sub Pop's latest signings, they've flown all the way from Oregon for the pleasure. They're playing three other shows this week in three different venues but I get to see them at the Metro. I'm the lucky one. And maybe it's because they're playing four shows over four consecutive nights that the place is empty when I walk in. The Metro Club's tiny but you could swing a cat tied to another two cats down here without hitting anyone. Don't worry though. There are a couple of support bands to get through before the main attraction. I'm sure things will pick up by then.
I miss the opening band (some youngsters called the DIY Cravings) so first up are Twisted Charm. What a terrible, terrible name. But they look like nice young chaps, all artfully tousled hair and holes ripped into their black shirts. Mmm, punky. They start off with a Jah Wobble bassline, some steely post-punk guitar, shouty vocals and a bit of no-wave saxophone. Pretty good in a hitching-a-ride-on-the-bandwagon kind of way. Next song sounds exactly the same. Third song ditto. Things are immeasurably enlivened when the bassist accidentally unplugs his speaker and the band have to start all over again. No such hilarity with the next song, which sounds just like the first. And so on. There isn't even any in-between song banter to add colour to the proceedings. I like a bit of banter, me. My mate JP is unimpressed. He says, "It was a lot better first time round when Gang of Four did it." He has a point.
I go to the bar. Twisted Charm are extremely loud and I have to indulge in a spot of mime so that the barman can understand me. I mime "Two pints of beer please" quite successfully but I have trouble doing the brand name. I don't know acceptable movement for Stella Artois. The man gives me two bottles of hooch. It costs me six quid. Humbug. The band finally end. There isn't much applause but, being charitable, I'd like to say that it's because there are only 15 people in the place anyway.
The next band are called the Blood Group. That's a good pun. I like a good pun, me. They amble on and they're hairy. Hairy, sweaty men, undoubtedly men of rock. The drummer looks a bit like Adam, a bloke I went to school with who was a chronic masturbator. I wonder what Adam's up to now. Last I heard, he was training to be a priest. It would be funny if he'd given up both his vows and his wanking to play drums in an indie band. The singer is a whippet thin beanpole with Sideshow Bob hair. The bassist looks like a reject from the Cockney Rejects. I hope he really is a Cockney. That would make him a Cockney Cockney Rejects reject. He's got pierced ears. I've never liked pierced ears. As my grandmother says, "Oooh, I can't stand all that muck." Granted she's 85 but I don't think my grandmother would like the Blood Group. I'm glad I didn't invite her after all.
The Blood Group play their first song. It's fast and loud and metallic. It sounds to me like they worship at the ever expanding altar of MC5. JP reckons they sound like Judas Priest. "They've nicked that riff from The Priest," he says. He would know. He's from Birmingham, which is the home of Black Sabbath and old school metal. When you're from Birmingham they make you have lessons in heavy metal at school. Forty minutes a day before lunch. JP passed his metal exams with flying Vs. Me, I don't know much about metal but I know what I like. And I kind of like the Blood Group. They're ever so slightly sloppy and they play to the tiny crowd like an ever so slightly sloppy MC5.
The lead singer takes off his T-shirt and goes for a wander through the tiny crowd, which by now isn't quite as tiny and has grown to about 20 people. He is a genuinely hairy, sweaty fellow and not wanting to go anywhere near his sweat, I go to the toilet. It turns out that the club's hired a man to hand you towels and soap once you've had a pee. I thought that only happened at posh restaurants and Disneyland. Call me old fashioned but I think the Metro Club should be spending the money on cleaning the floor. The man wants me to pay him for turning on the tap. I find the idea of paying for such a service reprehensible but I give the man a pound because, like all Englishmen, I don't like to cause a fuss. Instead I go back out to complain to JP.
"Did you know they've got a man in here who charges you to wash your hands?" I say.
"Yeah. He grabbed me before when I tried to leave without washing," JP replies. "He said it was unhygienic. You can get buboes just touching the bar in here and he said I was unhygienic."
"So did you wash your hands?"
"No. I told him to fuck off. You didn't pay did you?"
"Of course not."
My urinal hand-washing cowardice is immense.
Finally, the Thermals are on. Christ they're young. Or are they? I can't tell anymore. I mean, I'm only 26 but I feel like some kind of decrepit uncle amidst this crowd (which by my count now totals 30 people). Whatever, the Thermals look young. And brainy. And heavily tattooed. Like high school kids on a geography trip who've accidentally wandered into a tattoo parlour and had a bunch of tattoos done by mistake. Happens all the time. Anyway they look young. Like a modern-day Bis. Also, if you squint, the bass player looks like Zadie Smith. And the singer looks like Tobey Maguire. And I don't think the drummer, fresh-faced, clean cut and tattoo-covered as he is, looks like anyone. But his high hat is incredibly high. He must have very long arms. Honestly, I've never seen a high hat so high. It's really really...high.
And they start playing. Emo to the max. If they were superheroes, that would be their catchphrase. But they're not superheroes, they're an emo band. And they're a good emo band. I didn't even know good emo bands existed. Sharp, tight downbeat melodies cadged straight from the eighties but sounding in otherwise rude health. You've heard all their stuff before, a million times over, because it all comes straight out of the indie rock songbook. It's the kind of music I was immersing myself in back when I was 16. Lo-fi thrash for misfit kids. But they do it very well indeed. The singer's voice is a little whiney, and it strays a little too close to Brian Molko's nasal strangulations on occasion but it's a small price to pay for punk this damn captivating and, dare I say it, emotional.
Look at the drummer go! He's beating the shit out of that high-hat. In fact, it looks a little like he's trying to knock a vicious squirrel out of a tree. The bass player is bouncing all over the place, perhaps trying to catch the imaginary squirrels that the drummer's knocking out of the tree in an invisible bag. The singer, however, doesn't fit into my tortured squirrel-catching scenario at all, and is simply screaming his lungs out. It's obviously great stuff, especially as their songs all adhere to the punk rule of not lasting more than two minutes each. Sure the Thermals are thrashy and primitive and unoriginal and the songs have got woe-stricken titles like "Born Dead'", "No Culture Icons", and "Back to Gray", and it's overwrought as all hell, but it's got moxy and heart, and what more do you need?
Well, more than six songs would be nice. Considering that the support bands both had half an hour each, it's a surprise when the singer announces after fifteen minutes that their set has to be cut short. Without any ceremony, the band stop playing, put down their instruments and start packing up. No encore, nothing. It's a bafflingly abrupt close. Personally, I think they're being hustled off because they're too good for the Metro Club. Or maybe they need to go to the toilet and don't want to pay for the privilege of using the lavs here. Either way, JP turns to me and says, "I wish they hadn't stopped so soon. I was enjoying that." I have to agree.
— 6 August 2003
