The Thrills: Let's Bottle Bohemia

Wind back to Election Day, 5 May 2005, the night before the day after, and I'd been invited to a small soirée in a Clerkenwell bar by the boys at FRUKT (those invitations seem to have dried up, though I can't think what I've done to offend). And one part of the evening was a lucky-dip/swap-shop thing where we were invited to bring along any CDs surplus to requirements. For each one you put into the pool, you could take one out. I contributed one of the two copies I had of Second Coming (that's another story). That may have been about the most public-minded contribution, because I remember there being a lot of dross on show: hundreds of giveaway samplers, you know the kind. But I was quite satisfied to snag this promo copy of Let's Bottle Bohemia.

When I first started to listen to BBC 6 Music in 2003 it seemed sometimes like wall-to-wall Thrills. Specifically Santa Cruz and Big Sur on repeat play. Then when I put this on I wondered what had become of the band since I haven't heard of them for so long. Turns out that their third album — the one after this one — came out last year and more or less vanished without trace. So their label dropped them.

One of the great things about the free on-demand streaming at Last.fm now is that you can immediately compare the first album with the most recent one (they've been able to do this for a couple of years in the States with Napster, but it's new to me). So I can tell that this unfortunate turn of events wasn't caused by the band taking some anti-commercial left turn. It seems they're playing the same bright West Coast country pop that they always were — but no one seems to want it any more. Perhaps that ground just got too crowded with the Magic Numbers and so on. What do I know?

Wikipedia tells us that "the band often cites Neil Young and the Beach Boys as its main inspirations", which is fine, even if it does end up sounding like the drippier end of Neil (think Lotta Love rather than Don't Cry).

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