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by Lauren Gitlin
The Thrills (Conor Deasy, Ben Carrigan, Daniel Ryan, Padraic McMahon, and Kevin Horan) may hail from Dublin, but they've got the Americana sound down pat. The five-piece band, who, at a median age of 26, have been playing together since their high school days, combine twangy guitar and solid piano with Beach Boys-like vocal harmonies to deliver breathy, beautiful ballads that hearken back to the glory days of rock n' roll.
The band's debut album, 2003's "So Much for the City," is a sunny homage to California, a place lead singer Conor Deasy says embodies a kind of foreign romance. "When you're growing up, sand from a different place has a kind of glamour to it. And that's what music was to me-a kind of escapism," says Deasy. "We were deliberately writing these songs as outsiders looking in with a sense of awe."
Songs like "Big Sur," "Santa Cruz," and "`Til the Tide Creeps In" play out like precious snapshots of the West Coast. To Deasy and his bandmates, that's exactly what they were: After an aimless five-month holiday traveling up and down California's coast, the Thrills returned to their native Ireland and found themselves dropped from their independent record label. Grappling with what to do next, they wrote songs that recalled their carefree stay in America. "Putting time into the songs picked us up and remind us of better times," Deasy says.
Their escapist therapy paid off-in 2001 the band signed to Virgin Records, and "So Much for the City" garnered critical praise, even landing them on a bill with British mope-rock icon Morrissey. Their follow-up album, "Let's Bottle Bohemia," was released in July of 2004, and though lyrically it covers different territory from its Cali-informed predecessor, its Sixties pop sound is just as irresistible. |
