When we were small – or smaller than we became – my brother and I paced paths into the carpets and hardwoods of our childhood home, each listening to CD after CD on our Walkmen (his candy red, mine bumblebee yellow). We’d trade CDs, talk about the songs, otherwise letting the music percolate. Music became a shared vernacular, a thing through which we could communicate our deeper feelings, our thoughts about ideas we believed taboo.
Over time, our musical interests drifted, our lives focused on other conversations, other concerns. And then he told me to listen to Thrice, to listen closely. So I did.
Thrice’s music felt immediately familiar, hearkening back to a time almost-forgotten, when we’d lie in our de-bunked beds, headphones still in – Did you hear this one yet? and You want to trade these albums tomorrow? and I think it means this. We could talk about our worries; songs became a way to admit that maybe depression had taken root, but also to find anthems for getting through the day.
We always need anthems.
And so we planned to see them together, the day after my 34th birthday, to take in Vheissu, a special 15th anniversary tour. He took off work, I scheduled appointments, and we listened, an hour or so apart. We paced the floors of our adult homes, his children pattering, my cats shadowing. Thrice’s music rippled out of my car’s speakers, stilled only by the times I’d listen to Dustin Kensrue’s Carry the Fire podcast (brilliant, fwiw, from Thrice’s lead singer). My brother and I, We talked and texted often about the music, the songs, the validity of Christian imagery and symbolism in a life less christian. We talked about the virtues of Thrice’s shifting but steady sound (like a sand dune, always new but still a dune).
Vheissu is a deeply relevant record in the modern age, with its reminders of the importance of being human, of being good. In an era when truth is presented as a lie and a lie is accepted blindly, perpetuated by algorithms and talking points, a reminder to be honest and considerate rings painfully.
Thrice rolled into Baltimore on a Wednesday, following Holy Fawn (doom rock, I guess? It echoed loudly and beautifully) and Drug Church as the openers, as well as special guest mewithoutYou on their final tour visiting Baltimore. mewithoutYou treated the audience to a quick set that managed to span their career, though drawing three from the most recent [untitled] and two from Catch Us for the Foxes.
The main event came only a few minutes after mewithoutYou left the stage, quickly preparing to begin their set because of a Wednesday curfew. The band immediately jumped into the anthemic “Image of the Invisible” with its calls to be responsible for those who cannot look out for themselves. Nobody in the band talked for all of Vheissu, giving the album room to breathe, to expand in the crowded Ram’s Head Live! room. Every song stood out in its own way, but The run from “For Miles” to the impossibly epic “Hold Fast Hope” and then to the heartrending beauty of “Music Box” damn near stunned the audience into a rapturous state.
They ended Vheissu the way it ends on record: with “Red Sky” and its final call for hope in the shape of a eucatastrophe, the way the sky turns red like blood, but still, “We’ll raise an empire from the bottom of the sea”. It’s optimistic, a reminder that good can and will come after catastrophe.
The band then gifted the audience with a series of b-sides from the Vheissu era, including the changed “Weight of Glory”, the massive “Flags of Dawn“, and “Lullaby”, a scathing critique of Lennon’s “Imagine” (which doesn’t call for an end to evil, but sedation).
Dustin didn’t talk much, though he said a few thanks and shared they had a few left. They ended the main set with “Circles” and its reminders to set goals instead of just staying in motion and then “Black Honey.” “Black Honey” has arguably become the band’s largest hit, its melodies and hooks catchy, its message familiar. It takes the practice of meddling in foreign affairs as a template to discuss the importance of learning from our mistakes and sets it to one of the decade’s best rock songs.
The encore included just one song: “Words in the Water” from Major/Minor, one of the prettiest songs Dustin has written, full of salvation and, again, hope.
Seeing these songs live – especially as the band continues to evolve – felt, well, spiritual. To see it with my brother felt cosmic. Just an incredible experience and a reminder that I love rock that punks.
Please go see Thrice at your nearest convenience. At the very least, engage with their records.
