Thank You - Golden Worry (2011, Thrill Jockey)

RIYL = Ponytail, Battles, Deerhoof

Glory be; the ceaselessly gracious Thank You are back and even better than before. Wait, what? You don’t remember Thank You? Their debut album was Terrible Two... Nothing? Oh man, you best get on top of that. A blessedly blustery piece of mad-mathy rock workouts, that one is. And Golden Worry? Similarly blessed, wide-eyed, grinningly (though, not mischievously so) aggressive, superlative, superlative, math, superlative, superlative, rock agility, ad nauseam, sans nausea. The wide-smiling, hard-hitting glory of Golden Worry is the dog who, road-tripping across the Midwest, has his head out the window, jowls flapping madly, tail wagging relentlessly, all the energy in the world and just glad to be alive. Golden Worry fits that, even amidst its chant-happy, prog-heavy, drum-limberingly airy, out-rock gung-ho-ness. It’s there; a master class rock album that flips and turns effortlessly, bursts wildly, and satisfies.  And satisfies.

Thank you - Pathetic Magic

Thank You - Terrible Two

Thank You
Terrible Two
(04.2008, Thrill Jockey)
Verdict = Hyperactive instrumental blitz

Do you ever feel like your energy has been literally sucked out of you by some invisible force? Suddenly just out of energyand hittin' the hay at hours that defy your youthful age? Well, if so, I may have discovered culprit. Baltimore’s Thank You may very well be the energy thieves that have so subtly extracted our energies in order to use them for the creation of their debut album, Terrible Two. Why am I making such a baseless allegation? Oh, it is only baseless to those of you who haven’t heard this record because I tell you what, the three band members credited with creating this frantically energetic monstrosity could not have done so on their own. So, obviously, the only logical conclusion is that the band has created some machine that slowly steals the energies of the entire human race in order to hone said ‘energy’ into a berserk concoction of their personal fancy. See, that is why the band is named “Thank You,” it is a joke on its own listeners whose lives they have partially stolen. Either that or these guys are just simply bananas in terms of musicianship and creativity. Terrible Two contains generally identifiable parts (guitars, drums, bells, synths, eceteras) that have been twisted, contorted and hyper extended into mathy, chaotic, post-rock-esque jams that sound like they are causing their players to form massive blisters. It’s pretty exciting stuff to say the least. You could probably make fair comparisons to Battles, Animal Collective, WZT Hearts or By The End of Tonight, but Terrible Twos definitely stands on its own. A wild chaotic utterly enjoyable ride. Delicious.

-Mr. Thistle

Stream of Terrible Two