One of the festival's hottest tickets, the Sub Pop showcase, took over Bowery Ballroom Thursday night. The Seattle label's showcase included sets from Loney, Dear, Oxford Collapse, the Elected, CSS, the Thermals, Album Leaf and the evening's biggest draw, the Shins, who are ready to change your life all over again with their new album, Wincing The Night Away, which comes out in January. The evening's high point, for this reporter at least, was the Thermals' blistering, feverish set. Following the Romeo Void-ish disco sleaze of CSS, the Thermals really pushed the evening into high gear, taking the stage to an enthusiastic crowd that included fellow Sub Popper David Cross. Kicking things off with their album opener, "Here's Your Future," the Portland band's set was heavy on songs off their excellent new record, The Body, The Blood, The Machine, though they made room in the setlist for favorite oldies like "No Culture Icons," "It's Trivia" and "Born Dead." Though the set was marred by enough technical problems to cause frontman Hutch Harris to declare, "Sorry we suck tonight" in between gulps of beer, the Thermals still managed to whip the crowd into a frenzy, literally pouring their sweat into their hi-octane pop-punk. The political lyrics on The Body were especially poignant ( "Remove your people/Off the planet/Cuz Godamnit/We need the fuel." ) with Election Day around the corner, though the bitter anger of "God And Country" off of 2004's Fuckin A was conspicuously (and sadly) absent. We were lucky enough to speak with Harris earlier this week before his band landed in New York for the festival. He told us about the group's expanding lineup and their plans for 2007. CMJ: Is this your first time playing Marathon? Harris: This is our third time playing. We play every other year. CMJ: How'd it go before? Did you enjoy it? Harris: Oh yeah. It was great. The last one we played was at... what's the name of that place on Houston? The Mercury, I think. And then the time before that, we played the Bowery and that was with the Shins too. That was great. CMJ: Is there anyone you want to see play yourself? Harris: I haven't seen [the lineup] myself, actually. Usually when we're there, we're only there the days we play. Like we're playing the Sub Pop show and the next day we have two shows, so we only get to see the bands we play with. CMJ: Is there anyone you're playing with that you're particularly excited to watch perform? Harris: The Shins, always. Just because they're great and they're friends of ours from Portland, so it's always fun to play with them. CMJ: Do you have anything special prepared for your set? Harris: I don't know. We might. We have been doing this opening tour with Cursive for five weeks, and the two shows besides the [Sub Pop] showcase we'll be able to headline for the first time in a while. So we're excited about that. We also have a new guitar player, which is awesome. That'll be something new for us. His name is Joel Burrows. CMJ: The Body, The Blood, The Machine made a lot of CMJ staffers Best-Of-2006 lists. What's on your best-of list? Harris: Oh, cool. Of this year? The sort of records I've loved have been the new Built To Spill record, I love that. And the new Sonic Youth record, Rather Ripped, that's probably been my favorite record of the year so far. CMJ: What are you working on now? Can we expect new Thermals recordings in '07? Harris: We're writing a little. [Bassist] Kathy [Foster] and I wrote a little before this trip. But after we get back from CMJ, we go to Europe for a month and then early next year, we're going to headline our own tour. So we're pretty busy, as far as touring. I think we'll probably do a bunch of writing in the spring and summer of next year. And then I'm not sure when that will come out. CMJ: Lastly, what's your favorite thing about playing in New York? Got any tips for festival-goers? Harris: Shoot, I don't know. I don't know what to tell anyone that they wouldn't already know about New York. We love playing it. It's always awesome. Some of our best shows have been there. The last time, we played at the Knitting Factory with Fred Armisen, and that was totally awesome. www.thethermals.com
