Thomas Tantrum - Thomas Tantrum
This is the debut album from Southampton four-piece Thomas Tantrum, a band who initially crept into my consciousness in the last 18 months or so courtesy of Marc Riley, who has been championing them for a while on his 6Music radio show. Listening to their singles (three of which feature here), radio sessions on said show, live performances, and now this release, it is easy to understand the ex-Fall fella’s enthusiasm.
From the off, this is a collection of art-tinged, credible, yet also very accessible ‘pop’ songs. A whole sequence of tracks - notably ‘Work It’, ‘Shake It! Shake It!’, ‘Swan Lake’, ‘Blasé • seem ideally crafted as singles (and the first three have all been released as such) and, surely, with suitable exposure, chart-bothering singles at that. Combining elements such as a liberal use of “ooh ooh”s (‘Rage Against The Tantrum’, Work It’, Swan Lake’, Pshandy’), and a slow-fast-slow sense of timing and pace (‘What What What’, ‘Mum’s The Word’), these are songs that have bags of charm.
Thematically, the lyrics work well with Megan Thomas’ vocals. Possessing what I think may be one of those ‘love it or hate it’ voices, Thomas sings with a sweet, high, tuneful tone that is both extremely English sounding (complete with glottal stops, as in her delivery of “just split up” on ‘What What What’) and very young and girlie. This lends a whole heap of character and feisty insouciance to the band’s tales of youthful relationships and the standout detailing of the mix of endearing/bratty/petulant attitudes to be found in ‘Work It’, which features the wonderful couplet “Sometimes I feel so out of control / When I step outside I need a drum roll”. Slightly in the Los Campesinos! or Bearsuit school of kiddie-yelping, the band are nevertheless saved from becoming quite as irritating as these other two bands can sometimes be by the aforementioned charm, and a sense that the vocal style and lyrical concerns are genuine, and not an affectation.
This is very much a proper band, rather than just a vehicle for the singer, though. Mainly guitar-driven, the sound is leavened with appealing use of synthesizers. ‘Blasé’ uses what sounds like a sample from Trio’s ‘Da Da Da’, and frenetic guitar riffage on ‘Why The English Are Rubbish’ offsets the cutesy “la de dah de dah” refrain, which is the closest that the band come to straying over the dividing line between sweet and just plain sickly.
The album flags a little with ‘Zig A Zag’ and ‘Trust Rhymes With Crust’, three quarters of the way through but these, and possibly the over-long album closer ‘Pshandy’ are really the only less than lovely moments on this most lovely of bands’ release. I’ve been wrong about such things many more times than I’ve been right, over the years, but I would certainly think that this kind of creative, endearing, catchy and downright likeable pop merits a place high in the nation’s affections, record collections and charts.