The Thermals: Now We Can See

Label: Kill Rock Stars

In 2002, friends Hutch Harris and Kathy Foster had just completed their debut album, Hutch & Kathy (think low-fi folk pop), when Harris went through what must have been one hell of a breakup. Because in a matter of weeks, Harris wrote and recorded the ferocious, harrowing songs that would become the pair’s first album under the Thermals name, More Parts Per Million. And short, frequently scathing yet always catchy indie-rock songs have been their stock in trade ever since. Now We Can See is the band’s fourth album, and it picks right up where 2006’s The Body, The Blood, The Machine left off, only now the production values are more crisp, placing Hutch’s vocals perfectly front and center—which is great because he’s still writing some of indiedom’s catchiest rhymes about love lost and found (“I Called Out Your Name” and “At the Bottom of the Sea”). My favorites on Now We Can See are “When I Was Afraid,” a sort of ode to terror (“Fear is by my side/It kept me safe/Hell it kept me alive”) and “I Let It Go,” which is one of the best songs Hutch has written since More Parts. (Wendy)