I don’t remember how I came to All Are Saved, but I know I had thoroughly absorbed the album by the time I found out Fred Thomas was the bandleader for the excellent indie pop band Saturday Looks Good to Me. I spent a fair amount of time with their album All Your Summer Songs in my KJHK days, and it’s shocking that this is the same Fred Thomas. Thomas’ solo stuff eschews bouncy, throwback soul pop for an angular, lyrically dense sound. This record instantly grabbed me and I couldn’t figure out why. It’s a little outside of my usual wheelhouse, but I think it all comes down to Thomas’ songwriting. While there are a couple of poppy numbers here (“Cops Don’t Care Pt. II” with it’s excellent sing-a-long final chorus/outro), the squirrlier tunes are the sort that demand a deep dive. “Bad Blood” is my particular favorite. The song feels like a raw nerve and hit on a lot of truth. All Are Saved is an album that is constantly poking and prodding and forever unsettled. Though I weirdly didn't make time for 2017's Changer (outside of the magnificent "Brickwall" which is in my Top 20 songs of the 2010s if I remember correctly and was recently the centerpiece of an improvised interpretive dance I did with Rosie in the kitchen while I was cooking dinner, more on that later) and 2018's Aftering, and I don't have a good excuse for that considering how much I love this record.
No comments:
Post a Comment