The Thermals were always too fun to be viewed as the political band they saw themselves as. Their 2006 LP, The Body, The Blood, The Machine, was perhaps the most seamless critique the Bush Administration ever received, but The Thermals' keen Orwellian satire spared them from the abrupt wrist-flicking afforded to other groups with a political bent. The overwhelming charm that once excused the Portland three-some, however, is now entirely absent. Personal Life, their latest output on Kill Rock Stars, loses the emphasis on the punching guitar hooks and in-your-face sing-a-longs in favor of soft, melodious love songs. And it gets tiresome.
The Thermals have taken to calling this their ""love"" record, which should be warning enough. In and of itself, love is not an altogether interesting topic. It's only when pieces of art find a way to cover the yearning for, the absence of or the tectonic plates behind the construct of love that we get something more than nauseating navel-gazing.
And at times, Personal Life manages as much. ""Alone, A Fool"" explores loss and regret with quaint reservation well suited for its position as a late-album placeholder. ""I Don't Believe You,"" the album's first single and only time when singer Hutch Harris grows a pair and demands something of the relationship, is also, incidentally, the only time the Thermals recapture their striking guitar chords and sing-a-long oh-oh-oh's. However, the other, more plain love songs on Personal Life are doggedly linear, with more inertia than a dog at a butcher's door—which is to say they're boring.
""Not Like Any Other Feeling"" trips over itself until it finally just takes a squat on the floor. ""Only For You"" is the kind of generic, forced love song even Jennifer Aniston would scoff at. And if the 32-minute run time doesn't stop your record player, then the profoundly dull one-two sendoff of ""A Reflection"" and ""You Changed My Life"" will. Whereas affectionate Thermals stand-bys like ""A Stare Like Yours,"" from 2002's Fuckin' A, managed to pair adoration with tumultuous jubilation, Personal Life is simply all bark and no bite. By definition love is static, unchanging—it's just a shame this band has to be, too.
It's almost amazing to see how soft the band has gotten over the years. This is the band that once named an album Fuckin'A simply to spite censorship and corporate influence. They wrote an entire album criticizing Christians and fascists as if they were one and the same. But when Harris gently coos, ""I'll give you all that I have / I'll tell you everything"" over a stuttering guitar line that barely manages to glide over the tumbling bass riff, it's easy to forget why we ever came to care for these Oregonians in the first place.
In hindsight, a lot of the Thermals' appeal seems like a shtick. They pretended to have too much fun to acknowledge that they might have actually had something important to say. But for all the directionless tail-chasing they do on Personal Life, it's a wonder it isn't the least bit fun. I guess love might be more engulfing than religion or politics, and maybe this is one embrace they can't get out of. They're in love and they don't care who knows it; but at the end of the day, one principle reigns supreme—some things are best left unsaid.
