No Culture Icons! The Thermals trip fuses at the starting line of forthcoming longplayer The Body, The Blood, The Machine, whose solid mixing belies the no-wave hustle every indie kid’s left iPod earphone had been dreading. But the stereocilia don’t need to be so uptight; “Here’s Your Future” finds Sub Pop’s loudest in a relatively mooted gear, the unkempt distortion of before reigned in, all frilled ends snipped off to leave an opulently packaged summer delight.

But it’s really good. I promise.

Hutch Harris’ newly tamed voice, a focused yelp, grips the antlers of a galloping beast of a riff, straight from the mainline and shot out into a wild prairie guitar solo. And, sure, talk of God and Noah seems ill juxtaposed with this well-produced racket, but that odd tension defines the confrontational contours of The Thermals' fanged concept. Yeah, it’s thematically indulgent and doused in lyrical aphorisms that read poorly on paper (“No one can breathe under water”), but the embattled vehemence of the delivery is enough to convert a bunch of implosive Raskolnikov ponies into explosive rabble rousers. The joy is seeing the band’s wild energy harnessed, calibrated and concentrated into something more than a magic bullet. These strings take aim.

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