Tom Keeley delves more into the ideas that Thursday have always held
true. “Thursday IS a business. It’s officially a company but really it’s not a business to us. It’s a wonderful opportunity we’ve managed to afford ourselves to make art on a daily basis and I’ve shared music with as many people as are interested. Back then people weren’t selling records; they were giving it to each other, trading vinyl, it was about getting into a space with other creative people and having something explode. That was the whole point, the only point! And that informs absolutely everything we do.”
Thursday’s tight control over their work extends to the LP cover artwork. Recalling the creation of the incredible paper cut artwork for No Devolución, Geoff explains that he originally wanted Dutch artist Peter Calleson to provide artwork of his 3D paper models and silhouettes cut from a single sheet of A4 paper. Unfortunately he was elusive, “(Gerard’s) wife is an artist and she said ‘I have some of (Calleson’s) work in a book. Do you want to have a look at the book and see if there are any other artists that catch your
stunning. Throughout, the feeling is that Geoff, who went through a marriage break-up during the writing of this record, has strived to match the sonic experimentation of his bandmates with his rawest and most honest set of lyrics and vocals yet.
“I think when you’re breaking up a marriage, there’s not a lot of choice about what you’re gonna write about! I was trying to figure out how I was going to write about it,” he says frankly. “I was thinking ‘I don’t want to write a break up record. I love this person so much and I love my band’ and I started realising that it only really matters if you care enough to go there and that’s when I started thinking about devotion. And I thought, the same way we’re doing this ten year anniversary of Full Collapse, I thought maybe the end of this is about celebrating how great it is to get to love somebody for so long.” The savage sparseness of Empty Glass sees Geoff keening spectacularly but holding back as Tom Keeley’s incredible, shimmering backdrop – confessed to by Tom as a “mistake” that went right in the studio when he accidentally hit the backwards patch on a Line6 multi effects pedal while attempting a violin effect – and the result is something unbelievably powerful. Throughout the record there are moments that draw you back into the
hardcore world Thursday grew up in. Whether the dramatic drumming on A Gun In The First Act or the riff-driven Turnpike Divide, there’s some real straight forward thrash here. It seemed prudent then to ask if and how important the band’s hardcore roots are? “They’re incredibly important to me,” says Geoff. “I’ve stopped trying to
force it into our music when it’s inappropriate. I just gotta let Thursday be what it is and at the moment Thursday’s not a hardcore band.”
“The guys would be wriTing in The morning, recording in The afTernoon. i would email my lyrics To our producer, walk inTo The booTh and by ThaT nighT we’d have a compleTe song!”
eye? I’ll show you my favourite one’ and she turns to the page that basically became the cover of our record. I fell in love. Mia Pearlman is the artist. I kept the picture, I carried it around with me while we were writing the record then I finally found out she lived in Brooklyn about a mile away from me. I tracked her down and then it just really worked out. The craziest thing is that (Mia’s) husband works for DC comics and Gerard is a comic artist.” In yet another example of circular happenings, Geoff confesses unexpectedly that the Full Collapse tour was going to signpost the end of the band entirely. “We weren’t sure if we were gonna be able to write No Devolución. We had nothing written when we were supposed to go into the studio and we weren’t sure even if we had anything good to say any more. ‘We might go into the studio and what comes out might suck and, if it sucks, we’re not gonna release it. We’re just gonna tour Full Collapse and we’re gonna end the band and it’ll be perfect because we love that record. It’ll be a great celebration, it’ll be a great goodbye to our fans, so let’s just say goodbye with style. And then the record turned out so great - but also so different - that it made sense to us that we’re ending one chapter of the band and starting a new one.” This exciting rejuvenation may send a hopeful signal to Thursday’s fans. You may be about to re-discover your new old favourite band! PM
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