« Goldfrapp | Main | Neko Case »

Thunderbirds Are Now!

Whenever I'm in the mood for frentic, hyper electro-pop from Detroit with lots of angular guitars, warped synths, and singalong choruses, I turn to Thunderbirds Are Now!, one of the young upstart bands on Frenchkiss Records' roster. (Need I state the 80s influence? Or is it that obvious?)

Like a younger Les Savy Fav who've had too many Pixie Stix (and listened to too many Pixies records), they've got a whimsical, sometimes nonsensical take on post-punk. You might mistake lead singer Ryan Allen's voice for a female, but he's just busy wailing the lyrics as fast as he can, as he owns the microphone, strutting around, ranting, screaming, crying, and singing his heart out. Meanwhile, his younger brother, Scott Allen, is crawling around the floor, making love to his keyboard, and flailing his arms around like a madman. The rest of the spazz-tastic band holds down the fort quite nicely; the effect is that of a quartet whose barely-constrained, blistering energy leads to a taut, wiry, jittery stage presence. This is not one of those bands that takes itself too seriously. Justamustache, their most recent album, begins with a cheerleading "T-H-U-N-D-E-R-B-I-R-D-S Are Now!" chant, complete with handclaps.

Thunderbirds Are Now! often straddles the line between charming and precocious, but if you ask me, it's still a helluva good time. The songs are freewheeling, boisterous, and catchy as hell, and the band takes a page from the Tim Harrington Guide to Entertainment for their stage show: between the scissor kicks, piggyback rides, and bouncing off the walls, I've witnessed them incorporate anything from a roll of toilet paper and some towels to a California Raisins mask.

And yes, you can dance to it.

Thunderbirds Are Now! - Eat This City
Thunderbirds Are Now! - Pink Motorcycle Helmet
Thunderbirds Are Now! - Bodies Adjust
Thunderbirds Are Now! - Harpoons of Love

Thunderbirds Are Now! official site. Buy their second album, Justamustache, from Amazon or iTunes Music Store.

Shadows tags: thunderbirdsarenow.

Posted by Queen of the Front Row at 01.15.06 at 9:17 PM

Comments

Comments are now closed for this entry.

Recent Comments

What This Is
See You in the Pit is an MP3 blog exclusively featuring artists who will be playing the SXSW Music Festival, because the best way to learn about music is to hear it. This weblog will self destruct on March 22nd. You have been warned.

Queen of the Front Row is a twenty-something music fan in New York City who spends more time looking for new bands than she'd care to admit. She can usually be found watching live music in divey clubs on the Lower East Side. She loves that everybody she knows from NYC ends up in Austin for SXSW.

Little Miss Rock'n'Roll is very pissed off that the management of Emo's has repainted the ladies' loo red, masking that gloriously nasty pink paint and all that graffiti. It looks like a circle of hell now. Anyway, she'd like you to know that she's lived in Austin for nearly 12 years now and still knows all the secrets about you and that local musician you think you'd like to date.

Last Girl to the Party is always the last girl to the party...usually because she's fretting about what to wear. She has lived in Austin for 9 years, knows which bars maintain supplies of Campari and Pernod and which serve Stella Artois in those annoying goblets. She'd also like you to know that she has more shoes than Queen of the Front Row and Little Miss Rock'n'Roll combined.

Disclaimers
We are not affiliated with SXSW, any record label/bands/musicians, iTunes, Amazon, any secret government agencies, or your parents. Posts, comments, songs, and angry letters of indignation belong to those who wrote them in the first place.

MP3s for sampling purposes only and will be available only for a limited period of time. Please support the music makers; without them, SYitP does not exist. Information wants to be free, but musicians gotta eat.

This site powered by Movable Type, Squidfingers, and love.