With the release of their debut record "So Much for the City" early last year, The Thrills were able to put an ocean between themselves and the rest in the near-saturated Britpop legions -- literally.
Drawing heavily on the aesthetics of a four-month stay in San Diego with a stack of vintage SoCal folk-pop records, the blowzy quintet from Dublin (of all places!) emerged with a record that is beach reading for your stereo. Singles like "Big Sur," "Santa Cruz (You're Not That Far)" and "One Horse Town" wafted across airwaves and out of car speakers like a warm summer breeze. Somewhere, Brian Wilson looked at a beautiful sunset, took a long sip of his umbrella drink and smiled in approval. Morrissey was probably more worried about getting sunburned and didn't get it anyway.
But, sooner or later, The Thrills had to come home.
Blustery, overcast Dublin is a far cry from sunny California, and "Let's Bottle Bohemia" reflects the change in scenery. Musically, the new record sticks to the easy-going folk rock roots of its predecessor, but the mood has been, like, seriously hardened.
Take the first single for example. "Whatever Happened to Corey Haim?" begins with a catchy base line that the Jackson 5 could have turned into Motown bubble gum in no time. Instead of "A-B-C, 1-2-3" or the "Tell me that you'll dance to the end" of "Big Sur," though, we get "can't you see I'm full of lies / something, something once pure." The rest of the song easily keeps your foot tapping with a driving beat, and the airy string section (which pops up on a number of tracks) urges you to whistle along, but the project here is a cynical look at the American dream -- not exactly cheerful and carefree.
Subject matter doesn't change a great deal as the record spins along, but the music keeps on smiling. "Faded Beauty Queens" bounces around with all the alt-country charm it can muster. REM's Peter Buck adds a lovely mandolin while a pedal steel slides smoothly into the nooks and crannies. But, alas, the All-American girl is only getting uglier: "making teenage boys feel like a Christmas tree / ogling eyes, ogling eyes / I know you dread the day when it's any other way," Conor Deasy sings in his wind-burned tenor.
By the time we get to "Not For All the Love in the World," the music has been brought down, too. A slow, wistful piano gives way to soft guitar riff, reminiscent of Coldplay's "In My Place," if that song had been about a car crash and Chris Martin had taken a lot of lithium the day before. Deasy slowly, painfully tries to convince a troubled lover to "split" with him because "everybody went to a better party." Now this is Britpop. The Travis and David Gray comparisons can start lining up.
The music quickly snaps out of it, but The Thrills just can't quite shake the doldrums. In the second half of the album, Deasy seems to be searching for whatever it was he lost when he left the beach. In "You Can't Fool Old Friends With Limousines," he notes with a laugh that Jesus won't forget your past and the only thing to do is "overthrow this old guard." It's almost like he's apologizing for ever leaving his roots. Everyone knows five Irishmen have no business in California, right?
In "Found My Rosebud," The Thrills just let it all out: "Arrived in New York City / felt like a scapegoat before a committee / ... all this talk of regret / let's go slumming, let's go slumming / and start all over again."
You can take the band out of the city, but you just can't take the city out of the band, especially when that city is Dublin. From now on The Thrills are going to tell the truth.
Fittingly, the album ends with the boys at home. "If I could learn to love you / could you learn to love me?" Deasy asks his countrymen over a lively piano in "The Irish Keep Gate Crashing." You can almost visualize the Guinness toasts being raised in the pub as The Thrills go on about "Catholic shame."
"Let's Bottle Bohemia" is a paradoxical album that thrives on its contradictions. Those looking for the laidback, free-spiritedness of "So Much ..." will be a little disappointed -- this isn't the best album to take on vacation. However, the record is a skillfully crafted portrait of a band in flux, and the music is still very good. Will The Thrills go back to the sun, stay in Dublin or forge their own way? I'll be buying the next album to find out.
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