Live review: The Thermals @ the Marquis Theater
By bree davies | April 27th, 2009 | No Comments »
The Thermals fulfilled every promise they’ve ever made at the Marquis Theather on Friday. Photo from MySpace.com.
My Bloody Valentine played an unbelievably face-melting, eardrum decimating, totally amazing once-in-a-lifetime show Friday night at the Fillmore Auditorium. But I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there because heart won over hype, my brother and I instead choosing to stay true to the band that has never let us down. Friday night we witnessed an unbelievably heart-hugging, explosively valiant, totally awesome life changing set by the Thermals at the Marquis Theater (see our interview with them from last week).
Along with new drummer Westin Glass, Hutch Harris and Kathy Foster walked onstage with an awkward grace a few minutes after 11 p.m., promptly starting their unflinching fire. A generous mix of old and new, Hutch sweetly snarled through “Now We Can See,” “A Pillar of Salt,” “How We Know” and “St. Rosa and the Swallows,” Kathy bouncing by his side, hair and teeth shining in the dim light.
Intensely passionate fists cut through the seething bodies and bobbing heads as the crowd “amen-ed!” and howled along, Hutch leading his rock congregation through “Here’s Your Future,” “Back to Gray” and “I Hold the Sound.” His gorgeous rhymes and alliterations wrapped around themes of love, devotion and loss, Biblical references coming to life as they poured from Hutch’s mouth, as if the verses were peeled directly from the grooves of their recordings.
Hutch brought me to tears as the virtual sky opened further and he blessed us with “Verse Chorus Verse,” a cover of a secret Nirvana track from the 1993 “No Alternative” compilation. My brother and I jumped and screamed every word in disbelief as the Thermals channeled our childhood’s long lost anthem.
The small pit peaked, an epic wave of bodies toppling over each other as the Thermals encored with “No Culture Icons” and a great song Hutch called the “Thermals Theme Song,” his fervent and soothing vocal cadence carried to the verse’s end by Kathy’s bass-generated heartbeats.
A little bird told me that Kathy, Hutch and Westin snuck out of the Marquis pre-show to catch My Bloody Valentine play a few songs before their own set went down. When the Thermals took the stage, Hutch confirmed the rumor, asking the crowd why we ourselves weren’t across town at the Fillmore with the rest of Denver’s coolest and hippest. But to me, the answer was simple: we were waiting for Hutch and Kathy to baptize us with their crushing swell of emotive punk rock. And they did.
As Hutch screamed, “We were born to sin, we were born to sin. We don’t think we’re special, sir,” it was clear that we had been saved.
Bree Davies plays bass in Night of Joy, writes about her obsessions with Iggy Pop and Lil’ Wayne in her blog and repeatedly fakes her own death at Breedavies.com. She is also a self-proclaimed Twitter addict.
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