The Thermals – “Now We Can See”

Rating: 6.5/10

The Thermals are back with another pretty good rock album that fails to truly distinguish itself.

Maybe that’s unfair — the band’s sturdy, mid-tempo power-pop-punk shuffle and lead singer Hutch Harris’ affinity for clearly enunciating each and every syllable are both elements that are inimitably Thermals, but having a fairly distinct sound does not necessarily equal greatness.

Like 2006’s “The Body, The Blood, The Machine,” the songs on “Now We Can See” all follow a loose concept. Presumably the narrator drowns in the sea in the opening track and then sings a set of tunes that reflect upon his past life. This model does allow for some gleefully macabre lyrics, especially on opener “When I Died,” the album’s best song.

It feels strangely great to sing along with “I was only just past the low tide / when I died,” and the seesaw riff that kick-starts the track is the catchiest thing on the album. However, throughout the duration, the whole dead-at-the-bottom-of-the-sea thing reveals itself to be a pretty shallow framing device for a collection of overly-literal songs.

Besides this one great song, there are four pretty good songs (“At the Bottom of the Sea,” “When We Were Alive,” “I Called Out Your Name” and “You Dissolve”). The up-tempo, over-before-you-know-it “When We Were Alive” has the speed to break the monotony, and the lyrics are darkly hilarious (“we sold the wood / and bought the farm / and now we got a place in the dirt in the backyard”).

The rest of the songs are middle-of-the-road and not really worth repeated listens. Even in 30 minutes, one gets tired of the rote chord progressions and the fact that the chorus of every song is just the title repeated four times. This album desperately lacks a five-star, über-catchy pop song that would put it over the top.

Still, I don’t want to be too hard on these guys: .500 isn’t a bad batting average, and when it comes to no-frills rock ‘n’ roll like this, you can do a lot worse and a lot dumber.