Thursday
Full Collapse
Victory
Ah, my embarrassing giddiness when listening to this. See, Thursday’s Full Collapse is something of a rare record for these weary, jaded ears, ears that have long since tired of the blubbery, bathos-beating pop that’s otherwise known as “emo” the past half-decade. Thursday’s formula is all too simple: ridiculously infectious song structures that somehow evade verse/chorusisms, tons of half-time transitions to get you swaying to and fro, plenty of pretty clean-channeled melodies that are ripe with delicious detail, backup screams to make sure you’re not getting too lulled into catharsis (and vice versa), and in vocalist Geoff Rickly, a set of poignant pipes as pristine as Geoff (Gray Matter, 3, Senator Flux) Turner’s. Precious, yeah, but pretty damn perfect, too (see Coldplay’s Parachutes for similar evidence) • plus, it flat-out rocks. Really, having listened to Full Collapse an exorbitant amount of times already, I feel almost unqualified to critique it any further; doubtless, the only essential emo-rock record of the last six years, few such albums possessing as catchy and cathartic of a quality. “I’m falling down•”
Victory Records, PO Box 146546, Chicago, IL 60614; http://www.victoryrecords.com
