- At The Edges
- Red Seagulls
- Big Black Road
- Mtses. III
Thousands is an outside band, but the Seattle duo couldn’t be mistaken for an early morning band. Kristian Garrard and Luke Bergman likely appreciate what the mornings bring, what those early day hours actually stand for, what they can hold within them. They likely appreciate the dew and the need to lick the colic out of the bed headed hair. They appreciate the sunlight at a lower volume, just building up its glow after a long night of travel. They probably sit outdoors, on the good days, when it seems like there could be an endless amount of possibility, and cradle and sip their mugs of coffee, soaking in – more than anything – that they’ve got another day to play with. It’s a thought like that alone that can get the juices flowing, but you still have to work yourself out of those slumbering hours and into the movable ones, getting to a place where you are limber and you’re feeling as if you can get some stuff accomplished. The music on “The Sound of Everything,” their debut full-length, is a gratifying slice of those morning hours, but we think that the way these songs all came about must have been those periods of introspection, of staring off into the distances during those cool breakfast times. It seems that these were the silent parts of the process that all led to the bodies of these songs. It took waking up to a secluded yard that had been stormed upon during the overnight hours – sometimes secretively and others with much ado, thunder and lightning pronouncing themselves as a demolition crew. It took waking up to the greeting of a new storm, a soaker that – little did anyone know – was going to go on, lasting through the day, keeping all of the light in its crib. It took being able to flutter their voices in their heads, to talk to themselves, to reason with themselves and to question everything that “sweats a man to bones,” as they sing on “Must Be Born Again.” Thousands take us into these lands that are being dried out from great rains, lands where the grass and the brush are as green as they could ever possibly be. They’ve a way of showering us with the kinds of harmonies that are so delicate that they hurt. The way that they work together isn’t at all unlike the mechanics and approach of Paul and Art. They are synced with one another in a way that is impossible to understand. It’s important to note here that even though we feel that the mornings are their sanctuaries, they are able to sing this way that they do any time they have their eyes open – be it morning, noon or night. This session was recorded at the end of South By Southwest week at the unholy hour of 9 am. And they sounded like this. We know. It’s stupid. We just feel back that we took them away from what they would have rather been doing with their morning – collecting material.