The Thrills

If one thing has been consistent in terms of music this year it’s the obsession for artists to use 'The' as a means of expression to make the bland sound better, hence 'The' Datsuns (like, they’ve always been more reliable than Cortinas anyway), 'The' Strokes – alright so they’re last year’s news, and even 'The' Music (yawn). It’s almost as if there’s some secret society of 'The’s' whose sole mission is to prove they’re 'The' is better than the next one, and so forth.

Still, if they’ve got good tunes it shouldn’t matter what they wanna call themselves, right?

Opening band The Basement hail from Northern Ireland via Liverpool, and frontman John Mullin looks uncannily like Lee Mavers, which is probably a good thing as musically they sound like a cross between the La's and The Coral with the odd Beatles riff thrown in. When Mullin sings, particularly on ‘The Craic Song’, his vocal emanates tinges of a young Bob Dylan in the first verse and chorus but halfway through the song a throaty growl takes over sounding not too dissimilar to that of Jake Burns from fellow countrymen Stiff Little Fingers.

Whether that is their intention is highly debatable, but there’s something about The Basement which screams “pub band” in bright orange neon lights, yet at the same time there is a certain engaging charm about their timeless melodies all the same.

Once again the hype machine is in overdrive. Morrissey loves ‘em, Richard Branson loves ‘em (well they’re on Virgin anyway), the NME…hold it right there. Maybe the five blokes on stage that used to be known as The Cheating Housewives (allegedly) aren’t to blame, but the weight of expectation amongst the sell out crowd rests heavily on The Thrills' skinny shoulders.

It would be unfair to just lambast the band by picking faults – one must remember that this is their first UK tour after all, so we’ll start with the good points.

The most prominent feature of The Thrills is that they do actually look like a band – no, not stylised clones like The Libertines, but a group who obviously live and breathe what they do, from their lank, bedraggled mops that make them look like extras from ‘In The Name Of The Father’, to their unironed and underwashed shirts that are dripping with sweat by the time they leave the stage.

It’s also fair to say that vocalist Conor Deasey has a honey-tinged voice to die for, which comes to the fore on the uptempo ‘Dixie’, while recent single ‘Santa Cruz’ and ‘Your Love Is Like Las Vegas’ sound anthemic in a smoky live setting.

Unfortunately, there always has to be a downside, and with The Thrills it has to be said that they do have a tendency to tread the same country rock path to boredom as Proud Mary, which, in the context of this so-called exciting rock revival, just ain’t thrilling, is it?