Album Premiere: Half Thought — ‘Half Thought’

Posted: 18th March, 2019 by The Editor

You don’t need to listen any further than the first five seconds of “Reality World”, the opening track to Half Thought’s self-titled debut, to figure out what the album is all about (“Fuck it I’m waking up / the sunlight’s creeping in.”) Consisting of knotty guitar lines that sound as if they could unravel at any moment, Half Thought is fuzzy slacker-pop for neurotic 20-somethings who spend their weekends at basement shows chugging down stale tall boys of PBR. It’s a candid look at what it’s like becoming an adult at this moment in time—an ode to picking yourself back up everyday, and a reminder that it’s okay to not have your shit together.

Most of the tracks on Half Thought crawl at a punch-drunk tempo—occasionally the band lets loose a little bit, allowing the songs to unfold into these big impassioned, overblown choruses. Songwriters Travis Arterburn and Tom Anthony are no strangers to this particular style of music, they were both members of Clique before they decided to call it quits, and this new band finds them sounding a little bit like Braid on Quaaludes. Over half of the songs on the album clock in around the two-minute mark, “Artifacts” and “The Curb” are excellent showcases of the band’s capacity to end a song before it runs out of steam. These aren’t half-baked song ideas shoddily assembled, they’re brief snapshots that when placed together form something entirely different.

“Script Revisited” begins with a clip from The Sopranos, a rather funny scene where Christopher Moltisanti, who’s high out of his mind, delivers a rambling eulogy for Tony Sopranos mother. But when the song finally kicks in it takes a dark turn, surmising that “underground at least you’re sober”, culminating a desolate sway of twinkling guitars. The album ends on a high note with “Medians”, a frayed power-pop gem about how apathetic and wasteful humanity has become. Half Thought constantly teeters between foolish optimism and hopeless pessimism, eventually settling at somewhere in the middle.

Half Thought is:

Travis Arterburn – Guitar/Vocals

Tom Anthony – Guitar/Vocals

Tom Fala – Bass/Piano

Michael Walsh – Drums

Recorded by Evan Bernard at Big Mama’s Recording Studio in Philadelphia, PA.

Mixed by Travis Arterburn.

Mastered by Ryan Schwabe in Philadelphia, PA.

Cover Art by Dnl Hrs (@dnlhrs)

_

Michael Brooks // @nomichaelbrooks

The Alternative is ad-free and 100% supported by our readers. If you’d like to help us produce more content and promote more great new music, please consider donating to our Patreon page, which also allows you to receive sweet perks like free albums and The Alternative merch.