Thunder Power
Discomfort Begets Their Beauty
Jun 13, 2009
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Mike Gentry
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Welcome to Daytrotter
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Bite Marx
unreleased
"Ooh boy, just another pop song." -J.P. McClain & The Intruders
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Home Office
unreleased
The story of a married couple who still love one another, but both know their trajectories won't allow them to stay together much longer. Things just don't work. Things can't work. They don't want things to work. So they move on with no hard feelings and no kids to worry about. Even so, they can't help but hesitate as they start to give up the life they intended to build together.
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Take A Hike
original version appears on Love Yourself
The smothering affection of a friend/lover who is clueless to hints to maybe back off a bit. Either that, or maybe it's time s/he ought to just take a fucking hike and never come back. It's the kind of dichotomy played out in so many relationships: the one who loves too much versus the one who loves not enough.
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Blood Water
original version appears on Friend Ships
Somewhat a take on "The Grapes of Wrath." A family is torn apart by war and poverty during the years surrounding and encompassing the Great Depression. Meanwhile, oppression grasps at the have-nots with slippery, bony fingers. Yes, things are bleak and aren't getting better anytime soon.
Thunder Power lead vocalist Kacynna Tompsett sings like no one I've ever seen sing. It's as if her mouth is full of the sweetest and rare-to-find fruit and as she sings, she's determined to keep eating into those wondrous slices as well as not letting even a half drop of the delicious juices escape from her throat and tongue. It's a mesmerizing display of doing things a different way than most. It's a description that would make one imagine that the words she does sing are strangled and jumbled up in knots and straightjackets, but they come out so much differently. They billow out of her mouth with warm decorations and declarations, swaying in lightly raveling ribbons of white to wherever they're needed - to the ceiling, to the waiting ears, to the heavens that they deserve. They seem to dance with the empty void, not knowing how they got up there or out of the darkness, but they're not complaining. They're just drowsily ambling through their precise steps, being clear and being half-awake and half-asleep, all for the goodness of the song. It's a lowering of the lights, a slipping into something a little bit more comfortable, even if the subject matter that the words are rolling involves the furthest thing from wedded bliss. Thunder Power songs tackle the subject of domestic disharmony more frequently than would be expected of a young group of kids, fronted by a young lady who's not even allowed by the government to drink the same scotch that she sings about. Thunder Power reminds us of the kind of simplicity that is all we need to survive on, the ways that letters are put into words and then the way that they're given context - the way that no matter what we're going through, there's really no stopping and that's usually what gets us through and over to the other side. It's that feeling that daydreaming is a useful form of avoidance, a way to staving off the kind of entropy that will freeze the joints and muscles and make it easy for everything else to dejectedly shut down. Tompsett is a killer voice and though she's the most memorable piece of this Omaha band's puzzle (vocalists tend to be), it's her surrounding cast of Matt Hutton, Will Simons, Ian Simons, Jason Koba and Alex Boardman who construct the scenery for her to enrich. They make delightfully dark panoramas of relationships doomed for the sorts of predictable failures that most people hate to admit that they expect too. They make music for lovingly brooding souls - ones who hope for better times, but realize that these are more difficult to attain than they'd originally scripted out. It's all okay though, seems to say Thunder Power, as pain and discomfort beget their idea of beauty.
Thunder Power MySpace Page
Slumber Party Records
