Thursday - Kill The House Lights

by Simon T Diplock

Post-hardcore innovators raid the vaults

"Every beat of the influential New Jersey group’s musical heart is covered here. Anyone who has kept tabs on Thursday since their 1997 beginnings will recognise the raw, uncut adrenaline of a demo version of ‘Wind Up’."

It’s always difficult to make things like this work. Whatever you want to call it - the career retrospective, the odds ‘n’ ends compilation, the heartless record label cash-in; a CD of rare tracks, b-sides and live cuts can easily add up to a pointless mess, doing nothing to get its subject new fans and more often than not leaving even the band’s most ardent admirers cold. Thursday though, make this look easy.

For a start, every beat of the influential New Jersey group’s musical heart is covered here. Anyone who has kept tabs on Thursday since their 1997 beginnings will recognise the raw, uncut adrenaline of a demo version of ‘Wind Up’ (which eventually ended up on the band’s second and most-lauded long-player ‘Full Collapse’). Those who then followed their progress on to major label Island will hear a storming live version of ‘Signals…’ and wonder why the band didn’t take over the world like they were supposed to. And while new song ‘Ladies And Gentlemen…’ sees the band move back to Victory Records and their indie roots, it shakes and screams with a vision and ferocity that many thought Thursday had lost forever. And there’s more than music here too.

The DVD portion of ‘Kill The House Lights’ is just as impressive as the audio. There’s a film, a look through Thursday’s surprisingly tumultuous history that features extensive interviews with record label folk, producers, friends and band members past and present (for some reason avoiding the fact that it was this band who first unleashed My Chemical Romance on to the world). There’s footage trawled up from when frontman Geoff Rickly was a sickly-looking teenager and the band were barely out of school that even die-hard fans will have never seen before. And there’s a more up-to-date hometown show that, despite a few nasty rumours floating about the blogosphere last year, proves Thursday are still very much alive and kicking.

‘Kill The House Lights’ then, not only proving that the career compilation can be a ridiculously easy and entertaining thing to get right, but more than enough to whet the appetite for whatever this powerful, inventive and underrated outfit do next.

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