| Official rating: | 72 |
When The Thrills embarked on their massive schedule of follow-up touring for their sun-drenched debut, So Much for the City, an intentional effort was made for their follow-up album to trade their beach towel comfort, albeit with hesitation, for unfamiliar beds and ephemeral urbanism that underlie the loss of that nourished contentment.
By doing so, the band designed itself to rehash new settings, invoking a more casual attitude. So, as the blissful SoCal sun set on their premeditated entrance into the pop world, The Thrills became reactionary, forced to snapshoot their experiences in between those countless tour stops for their sophomore album, Let’s Bottle Bohemia.
Acknowledging the naïveté that charmed their debut, the rebuttal exudes cautious bitterness and tongue-in-cheek crooning: acerbic balladry piercing an optimistic backdrop. Frontman Conor Deasy’s lyrics sour in the wake of disenchantment throughout the record. “Curse of Comfort” unveils a skepticism that was incapable of staining their first album (”I hope love just gets in the way”). Unfamiliar experiences and demands brought the boyish Brian Wilson idolatry of their debut to its knees, and reset the band in its goal of developing a pessimistic side.
The group’s escapist attitude regarding city life fades between albums as the travel-weary Dubliners delve into the cynicism that was noticeably absent from So Much for the City. As “Found My Rosebud” suggests (”For the first time in my life/Feel like a country boy caught in the headlights”), the rushed, paved lifestyle wasn’t so easy to shrug off this time around. Devoted to embracing this new sentiment, the band recorded Let’s Bottle Bohemia in Los Angeles, only a few miles from the beaches they embodied, but noticeably distant from where they started.
Let’s Bottle Bohemia exposes the harshness of The Thrills’ nomadic fame with honesty, but similarly, their inability to re-capture the scenic poignancy that earned them that reputation.
I doubt that most of the people buying these pillows actually have a boyfriend, so why don’t they just call it the “Lonely Psycho” pillow?
