The Thermals played The Sinclair – 4/25

For a band I’ve listened to since high school, it’s been a long time coming for me to catch a Thermals concert. 

The last time the band was in town, three years ago, I had jury duty the next morning and opted for sleep – because for some reason I valued my alertness at jury duty. I rectified the mistake on Monday night when the Portland, OR power-pop-punk quartet (founders Hutch Harris and Kathy Foster, longtime drummer Westin Glass and guitarist Jessica Boudreaux of openers Summer Cannibals) rolled through Cambridge once more.

The Thermals’ 2016 spring tour celebrates both the release of their new record We Disappear and the tenth anniversary of their classic The Body, The Blood, The Machine. Accordingly, they offered up the majority of the former and the entirety of the latter on Monday night. The new songs sounded great, and TB,TB,TS remains a killer collection of hooky punk songs unified around the concept of a hypocritical Christian theocracy assuming control of North America (which, given the looming horror of the 2016 GOP nomination, still feels disturbingly prescient ten years later).

Harris joined us in the crowd for one song, and Glass officially wins the award for the first stage-diving drummer I’ve ever witnessed. All things considered, it was a good way to spend a Monday night. Moshing to “A Pillar of Salt” isn’t necessarily something you realize you need to do until it happens.

Also worthy of mention was an outstanding opening set from the aforementioned Summer Cannibals. Boudreaux fronts the band, which also hails from Portland, and led their snarling charge with compelling presence. The four-piece tore through well-crafted songs with fiery guitar work and a genuine surge of energy. They occasionally brought to mind a more aggressive iteration of Wild Flag – or maybe a more melodic Sleater-Kinney, although the Kill Rock Stars signing may be influencing those associations. Either way, the band impressed. Don’t be surprised to see them headlining around these parts before long.

An excessive number of photos from both sets below, because this was a really fun bill to shoot.