The Thermals Return After 10 Years. Hutch Harris Made 'Under Crushing Rain' Alone, Like the Debut.

The Thermals are back, and the band is one guy in a room again.

Hutch Harris announced Under Crushing Rain this week, the first Thermals album in ten years, out September 4 on his own label, Static Catsup Aspic. He wrote it, played it, and recorded it himself at his Portland studio, Brainwash. That is exactly how the Thermals started in 2003, when Harris made More Parts Per Million alone on a 4-track cassette before there was a touring band to play the songs. The lead single, "Spirit Collectors," is out now.

The obvious question, answered up front

A Thermals record without the rest of the Thermals raises one question immediately, and Harris got to it before anyone could ask. For most of the band's run the group was Harris and bassist Kathy Foster, who played on every album and held the low end together through a rotating cast of drummers. So: where is Kathy?

"SHE'S RIGHT HERE, sitting next to me working hard on the layout for the LP, as I write this," Harris wrote. "Not only did I have Kathy's blessing to make a Thermals LP, I had her help as well."

That matters. Foster is not a sidewoman here. She signed off on the name and worked on the package. This is a solo recording flying the Thermals flag with the bassist's blessing, which is a cleaner arrangement than a lot of band reunions manage.

Where this lands in the run

Under Crushing Rain is the eighth Thermals album and the first since 2016's We Disappear. After that record the band wound down and Harris went solo, putting out at least three LPs over the decade, including 2021's Suck Up All the Oxygen.

Place it against the catalog. The Thermals were never a studio band. They were a speed band. Fuzzed-out power-pop played fast and loud, Harris's yelp riding on top, most songs done before the three-minute mark. Their best record, 2006's The Body, the Blood, the Machine, pointed that engine at a concept album about fleeing a fascist Christian America, and it still sounds urgent. The whole appeal was momentum and a guitar tone that always felt one bad bounce from falling apart.

Harris says he chased that same feeling here. "I set out to make an LP that was incredibly Thermals-like, in the same fashion in which I made More Parts Per Million: quickly, and by myself," he wrote. "It is fast, cheap, and totally in control."

Why he stayed away, and what he missed

The reason for ten years off is not complicated, and Harris is funny about it. "I didn't miss practicing (takes too long) and I didn't miss touring (takes WAY too long and I don't get to see my dog)," he wrote. What he missed was the writing and the recording, the part you can do alone in a room. That is why this is an album and not a tour announcement.

"Spirit Collectors" is the first piece of evidence. Harris describes it as a song aimed at the talentless and the parasitic. "The evil fiends without arts of their own; lacking love and talent and with no drive to create life, their quest is only to steal from you everything for which you have worked so hard." That is a Thermals lyric premise if there ever was one. The band always picked big, plainspoken targets (God, the state, death) and went at them with distortion.

The tracklist

Under Crushing Rain runs ten songs:

1. Good Morning Fellow Scavengers
2. A Dark, Dark Place
3. Spirit Collector
4. Now I Believe
5. In the Flow
6. I Have Had Enough Blood
7. I Will Be Delivered
8. Angel Eyes Are Always Watching
9. On A Wind So High
10. Under Crushing Rain

One note for the obsessives: the title is showing up two ways. Harris's own label and Bandcamp list it as Under Crushing Rain, while a few outlets ran it as Under the Crushing Rain off the Instagram cover. The closing title track drops the "the," so that is the version to trust.

No tour, no band practice, no promises about either. Just a new Thermals record made the old way, by the guy who made the first one. September 4.