Thursday 01/06/06 Thursday, The Zico Chain @ Electric Ballroom, London

This writer’s defining memory of New Jersey’s post-hardcore pioneers Thursday is not, as you may reasonably expect, of one of their live shows (though they’re always ace), or of the first time we heard ‘Full Collapse’ (in my cousin’s bedroom in Texas as it happens), but occurs the last time they played London’s Astoria. The touts outside were proclaiming, as is their vocation, “Buy or sell tickets for Thursday”, leading to a host of bemused passers-by turning to their friends and asking, with puzzled expressions, “What’s happening Thursday?!” It’s a poignant reminder that while their more tune-laden, gothic protégés My Chemical Romance (lead singer Geoff Rickly produced Romance’s debut album ‘I Brought You My Bullets…’) have, in the period since Thursday’s 2003 release ‘War All The Time’, risen to become one of the biggest bands on Planet Alternative (in the process arguably paving the way for the likes of Panic! At The Disco and Fall Out Boy) Thursday themselves have quietly amassed an influence and semi-mystique that far out-strips their record sales.

However, before the main event it’s Brighton three-piece The Zico Chain. “We have a CD for sale tonight. Please buy one because we need petrol money” says frontman Chris Glithero. Frankly, their turgid sub-Motorhead characterless mess of a noise is so so bad that they should be forced to walk home, bare feet. Over a path strewn with glass. Incidentally we only mention them as during Thursday’s set all three members ran back on stage, this time bouncing around stark bollock naked. So wacky! And utterly useless.

Apparently the producer of Thursday’s new album ‘A City By The Light Divided’ Dave Fridmann (yup, he of Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev fame) told the band that he thought their albums were great, but that they were a lot better in concert, and so, quite simply, decided to record them live. As revolutionary recording techniques go it’s hardly holding a gun to their head as they play, but it’s an approach that has worked wonders for the finished product. A record with biting, poetic and often arresting moments, ‘A City…’ is certainly the best Thursday record since the mighty ‘Full Collapse’.

Of it’s new tracks that we hear live for the first time tonight, ‘The Other Side Of The Crash’, with it’s despairing vocals and mastery of pace and mood manages to live up to Geoff’s assertion that it was “influenced by Joy Division”, while ‘At This Velocity’ turns out to be based on a near-death experience in Australia involving a descending plane and Haley Joel Osment, and is as violent and heavy as only anything involving that little creep from ‘The Sixth Sense’ could be. Meanwhile, are we the only ones that think the “burn this city down” refrain from first single ‘Counting 5-4-3-2-1’ is surely an intentional, and quite cheeky, lift from Franz Ferdinand?

Interspersed throughout are Thursday classics (seriously) ‘Understanding In A Car Crash’ (amazing opener, whose key line is the unofficial Thursday motto “I don’t want to feel this way forever”), ‘Paris In Flames’ (featuring the Rickly party trick, screaming with no microphone!) and ‘For The Workforce, Drowning’ (actually closer in spirit to the likes of our own Hard-Fi and Kaisers with it’s sense of urban alienation, of working in soul-destroying jobs making “copies, of copies, of  copies”) to name just three. All the while Geoff is exhausting to watch as he dances across the stage, even body-popping at one point like punk’s own Peter Crouch.

We adore Thursday, as if it hadn’t been made clear enough already. This isn’t so much a review, as plain adoration. Tonight the Electric Ballroom isn’t even sold out, but there’s no bitterness and disappointment from the stage. All we get, and give back, is love.

P.S. Even Charlie Simpson is a fan!