Their new record, I Have Nothing, continues these themes whilst beginning to introduce new ideas and themes into the mix, particularly bluegrass and Eastern subtexts. However corny that may sound, it blossoms beautifully into one of the most painstakingly constructed and engrossing records I’ve heard this year.
The opening track, “Push”, begins from a base of a heavy, deep drone, before a gently plucked sitar (or is it a banjo?) cuts into the by now undulating throb. At once, it recalls the minimalist Southern sound of Earth’s recent output and Ry Cooder’s soundtrack works, whilst also bringing to mind the pervasive Eastern influence that exists in Cooder’s sound.
The basis of most of the pieces on this album, including the aforementioned opening track, are drones of varying degrees of heaviosity, coupled with heavily treated instrumentation and electronics, although the band have said that few synthesizers were used in producing the album.
The songs are relatively short, none clocking in at over six minutes, but this doesn’t detract at all from the mood of the album. If Thousands seem to be taking a group of ideas, or even fragments of ideas, and have then proceeded to push those ideas, one at a time, as far as they can reasonably be taken, before leaving them behind.
The results build, often almost hypnotically (such as in the case of “Cymbol”), a superstructure of effects and musical sounds taking their proper places within and around the central drone, before the whole thing begins to dissolve and decay and the we move on to the next piece.
Later on in the set, “Trout” invokes the bluegrass sound I mentioned earlier, but it’s heavily stylized. An almost nonsensical - in a GOOD way - banjo (or is it a sitar?) line meanders away, whilst radio noise and electronics twitter menacingly beneath.
The album takes a sharp detour towards the end – the intriguingly named “Crispin Glover” staggers into view, which sounds like the soundtrack to Mr. Glover moving away from being his day gig as the ninth best actor ever in order to become a carnie, operating a ride which, quite literally, scares all the excited children to death. It’s as pleasingly unsettling as it sounds.
This short interlude is followed by the darkest, most beauteous point on the record, “Alpha”. A slowly bowed cello provides a colossal droning howl, stretching, mutating, as the most minimal of electronic signals and guitar noise mutter beneath, breaking through the surface at times, to disorientating effect. It’s all good, though. Disorientation, in the company of If Thousands, rules.
