A Song For Friday: The Thing

On their third album, the Brooklyn rock & roll band proves the genre and format are in rude health. Also: Ethel Cain, Shakti, and Reena Esmail

Alongside the familiar carcass of the deceased equine known as “rock is dead,” a new, smaller corpse (a pony?) has appeared to be flogged: “There are no bands anymore.” Sometimes expressed as a joking aside or an anguished “what happened to all the bands,” the only thing this line of inquiry reveals is the speaker’s ignorance and laziness. For sure, what pop culture overlords as still exist would have you believe that “today’s music” consists mainly of solo performers, sometimes with single names, who make their records with rafts of songwriters, producers, and anonymous musicians, taking the stage with more faceless players and a phalanx of dancers to provide simulated interactions with the star. While some or all of those ingredients can lead to great music, their primacy within the closely guarded walled city where the big money is made is a result of business decisions. The human impulse to gather with other musicians and singers and create the alchemy that can only come from playing together is still in rude health.

Which leads us to The Thing, the Brooklyn ROCK BAND and Exhibit A of the injection of adrenaline that can revive both horse and pony with a sheepish whinny and send them off into the wilderness with their tails between their legs. First a trio and now the paradigmatic quartet of two guitars (Michael Carter and Jack Bradley), bass (Zane Acord), and drums (Lucas Ebeling), The Thing has been plying their trade since 2022. Their first album, Here’s The Thing, hit my Top 25 in 2023, when I praised its “snappy, catchy, urgent songs bristling with sharp riffs and driving rhythms” and “combination of melody and attitude.”

“We threw all of our different various influences throughout — all the decades of rock and roll and adjacent genres — and ended up with something of our own. Our contribution to the genre. Our style. Our… thing.”

- Jack Bradley, Guitarist/Vocalist, The Thing

Album two, The Thing Is, pulled the same threads in 2024, and I loved its “tightly wound rock & roll that finds all kinds of fresh ways to put two guitars next to each other while bass and drums set the pace behind them.” Their third, self-titled, album came out this week, and it’s their best yet. The added ingredient this time is a wildness they’ve somehow managed to translate from the stage to the studio, pushing songs to the edge in thrilling fashion. Even though they’ve always recorded live to tape, it can be a challenge to let loose the reins when not in front of an audience. The result is an album that goes fast and hard, without ever losing The Thing’s signature sense of fun.

A perfect example comes late in the album in a song named after the bitter wormwood-based liqueur, Malört. The track opens with a bit of amplifier buzz and someone shouting “Take six! One, two, three, four,” before launching into a massive riff that descends, then ascends before dropping out to let a driving fuzz-bass take over. One guitar joins the bass while the other starts writing lightning in the sky. The drums push everything hard, then harder, through a couple of verses with a grabby melody and well-nigh unintelligible lyrics. Maybe all you need to know is that Bradley calls Malört “an ode to how you feel when you're really, really f’d up.” What else should a rock & roll song be about? An instrumental section follows with some cool guitar counterpoint as the rhythm section becomes increasingly inflamed. The opening riff returns, and after some maniacal chuckling and more amplifier buzz, the song is over in just under three minutes.. Play it now and play it loud!

The whole album, which they’ve been releasing as a series of singles since March, is an excellent ride. As you can imagine, The Thing is a heckuva live band, so keep an eye on their website for shows in your area. With a free show in Tompkins Square Park (8/9) and dates in Brooklyn (8/15) and Amagansett (8/22), New Yorkers have no excuse to miss them this summer. Australians will get their first chance to see them in concert in October, but what happens between and beyond is anybody’s guess. But I know it will be great ROCK & ROLL played by a great BAND.

The Thing’s name is legion, too, as over 50 bands rocking in one way or another were on my Best of 2024: Rock, Folk, Etc. Get to it!

Listen to most of the songs for Friday here or below.

Also Out This Week

Ethel Cain - Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You When Cain’s debut album, Preacher’s Daughter, came out in 2022, I gave it a listen or two, but found her persona and mythology more compelling than the music. Then, in January of this year, she released Perverts, nearly 90 minutes of moody, droning, sometimes spooky, tracks. While it divided some of her audience, I found much of it quite beautiful and became curious as to how the experience of making Perverts would change her approach to more conventional songs. Now we have Willoughby Tucker, pitched as a prequel to Preacher’s Daughter, and it’s as absorbing as Perverts while delivering more moments of song-based satisfaction. The album is anchored by the first single, Nettles, a long, lush track bedecked with pedal steel (Todd Beene), and her best dream-goth-Americana song yet, but maybe most impressive are the instrumentals Willoughby’s Interlude and Tempest, which make great use of synths once used by Twin Peaks maestro Angelo Badalamenti. Ethel Cain sounds like she’s exactly where she wants to be. It’s up to you to meet her there.

Shakti - Mind Explosion (50th Anniversary Tour Live) Earlier this year, we got the gift of Third Coast Percussion’s recording of Murmurs In Time, a marvelous composition by tabla master Zakir Hussain, who died weeks after recording it. That immense loss for the world of music is further confirmed by this joyfully virtuosic romp through Shakti’s catalog. Formed by Hussain with guitar magus John McLaughlin in 1973, the last lineup of Shakti also included Shankar Mahadevan (vocals), Ganesh Rajagopalan (violin), and Selvaganesh Vinayakram (percussion). The group hit the road for a victory lap in 2023, including a Tiny Desk Concert, the delights of which are revisited here in a beautifully recorded and sequenced album. One highlight is the way McLaughlin, then 81, interjects bluesy riffs from time to time, as if to say, “All music is one.” And he’s right.

Reena Esmail - Exaltations This EP brings together three works Esmail wrote for double choir and brass quintet to be performed with choral works by Gabrieli and Bruckner. With lyrics from the Christian tradition and melodic material derived from ragas, the result is an uplifting and complex experience, here recorded to perfection by the Cathedral Choral Society, conducted by music director Steven Fox, with soloists Katelyn Grace Jackson (soprano), Matthew Newhouse (tenor), and Aryssa Leigh Burrs (mezzo-soprano), supported by a glorious brass quintet led by French hornist Mark Hughes. Exaltations gives me some of the same feels as Benjamin Britten’s Gloriana, which sought to celebrate a culture while also commenting on it. Having never composed for these forces before, Esmail has set a new standard for the combination of voices and brass.

From The Archives

Record Roundup: New Music Cavalcade

Note: The graphic above is based on a photo by Seana Adama.