The Thermals – Brundnell Social Club, Leeds 15/06/09

The Thermals have been one of the most quietly consistent pop bands of the last six years; straight outta the hotbed of indie creativity that is Portland, Oregon, the band are breezing through the UK for the first time since playing with the Cribs last year in support of fourth album Now We Can See.

Taking in selections from across their back catalogue (though sophomore album Fuckin A is sadly only represented by its effervescent single ‘How We Know’), the band’s set is a masterclass in both power pop and time management; with minimal banter, the band tear through twenty songs in an hour, and there’s not one misstep. Even when they wheel out ‘Test Pattern’ and ‘At the Bottom of the Sea’ – two songs that, at least by the Thermals’ standards, border on ballad territory – the crowd are completely entranced; the latter in particular, with its nods to the mellow minimalism of the third Velvet Underground LP, is an unexpected highlight. Still, the best reaction goes to the rowdier material from 2006’s breakthrough album The Body The Blood The Machine, with ‘Here’s Your Future’ – which condenses the majority of the Bible into two and a half minutes – being received with particularly apt rapture.

Without exception, everyone in the Brudenell looks as if they’re having the absolute time of their lives; hopefully every Thermals gig is like this, or maybe it’s the Jarman connection (it’s scientific fact that everyone in Leeds under the age of 25 loves the Cribs), but it’s still a beautiful sight. For the entire duration of the set, a couple – she in a fetching grey dress, he in a purple Dinosaur Jr t-shirt – dance continuously by bassist Kathy Foster’s feet while a gaggle of adoring girls lovingly yell every word that Hutch Harris sings back at him. The man who looks like he’s enjoying himself the most is Westin Glass; yeah, OK, so he’s the Thermals’ drummer, but his enthusiasm – punching the air whenever he’s not hitting the skins, singing along as animatedly as the biggest fans in the venue, maybe more so – is far more endearing than the masses of bands who look like they’d rather be anywhere else than onstage. In short, the energy and excitement in the room as infectious as the songs which incite them.

The set ends with a trio of tracks from the band’s early days that effectively set out the band’s no-nonsense manifesto. These three songs epitomise everything great about the band; guitars that sound like they were strung with barbed wire, a relentless rhythm section and Hutch’s barked shards of confused slogans – proudly proclaiming “The Thermals go right to your head! The Thermals have sex in your bed!” one minute, then promising “NO SELF-REFERENCE!” the next. It’s these contradictions, coupled with Harris’s winning way around a pop song, that make The Thermals such an explosive band, and as the sweat-drenched trio stagger offstage, it’s hard not to get caught up in it. Fuckin A, indeed.

Setlist: Returning to the Fold/I Let It Go/How We Know/I Called Out Your Name/Back to Gray/A Pillar of Salt/When We Were Afraid/Test Pattern/We Were Sick/A Passing Feeling/Here’s Your Future/Goddamn the Light/At the Bottom of the Sea/Now We Can See/I Hold the Sound/Everything Thermals/No Culture Icons/It’s Trivia