The Thorns

From the Department of Who-the-Hell-Came-up-with-This? comes the Thorns (Aware Records), an alternapop updating of the harmonically mellow soft rock sound of the 70's Comprised of Matthew "Girlfriend" Sweet, Shawn "Lullaby" Mullins & Pete "No, I Don't Know Who He Is Either" Droge, the Thorns sound like something you could've heard in 1971 - when the Beach Boys were singing about canyon life for their new Brother Records label and Stephen Stills was bemoaning his failed relationship with blue-eyed Judy Collins.

First time I heard of the new group project, I wasn't too thrilled. I've enjoyed Sweet's pop-rock work, in particular - especially the guitar zoomers done with sharp guys Richard Lloyd and Robert Quine - but country soft-rock was a whole different proposition. Without sufficient punch, Sweet's music can sound pretty squishy to these ears: I don't much like Neal Young without Crazy Horse either.

Listening to the deliberate opening track, "Runaway Feeling," with its slowly strummed dulcimer and incongruous references to a "rock 'n' feeling" (this is way too draggy to be calling up r-'n'-r), I suspected my worst fears'd been realized. This was like CSN on Quaaludes: divine chorus harmonies or not, there's a point where you can definitely overdo the low-key acoustic thing. Then the boys got into cut two, "I Can't Remember," a romantic ballad that sounds like something you would've heard alongside "Bad Time" on one of those Have A Nice Decade collections.

I was almost ready to give up on the disc when the group launched into a perfectly respectable cover of the Jayhawks' "Blue" (hey, didn't those guys do a version of "Bad Time" once?) This ain't bad, the hidden mellowhead inside me opined, and it continued to repeat that phrase when the disc slid into its "Teach Your Children" update, "Think It Over."

Article Author: Bill Sherman

Bill Sherman is the Comics & Graphic Novels review editor for Blogcritics. With his lovely wife Rebecca Fox, he has recently co-authored a sudsy size acceptance novel entitled Measure By Measure.

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