“Delicate” and “quiet” aren’t normally adjectives that come within screeching dis tance of Thurston Moore, founding member of Sonic Youth and leading cause of tinnitus for much of the nineties’ Alternative Nation.
Wesley Eisold is a Renaissance man—the former leader of influential hardcore bands American Nightmare/Give Up the Ghost is also a poet who maintains his own publishing house—but his tastes run decidedly to the gothic.
“My past is getting us nowhere fast/ I was never one for taking things slow.” Dave Grohl sings these words late on Foo Fighters’ seventh album, but backs them up throughout.
Too cerebral to be emo, too emotional to be punk, too hardcore to be popular: There are plenty of reasons Thursday has never made the leap from underground adulation to mainstream consecration.
“The Heart Is a Beating Drum” is both the pulsating third song on the Kills’ fourth album, Blood Pressures, and a sort of manifesto for the rawboned Brit-blues duo behind it.