Firmly rooted in the analog sounds of the past, Thousandaire’s 2020 self-titled debut blazed with the depressive fury of the band’s post-hardcore predecessors, with Andre Wiggins’s fuzzy guitar leads striking a neat balance between beauty and violence. On their sophomore effort, Ideal Conditions, the Atlanta-based trio are mostly up to similar tricks, again delivering blaring guitars, rumbling bass, and drums that crack loudly with every snare hit.
Overlaid with Wiggins’s drawled, coolly off-key singing, the album is a lazy music writer’s dream come true, as the (slightly shallow) comparisons to Dinosaur Jr., Neil Young, and Pavement practically write themselves. Opener “No Good” gets right to it, cutting into a laidback rhythm seemingly mid-groove with mellow guitar plucks and Wiggins’s vocals, all continuously building in intensity until the song rings out in a flurry of guitar noise.
Ideal Conditions’s nervy forward momentum and overdriven bass tone recalls that of ’90s revivalists Ovlov, but Thousandaire look to a variety of other inspirations across the album’s 37 minutes. “Your Gold Teeth III” tips its hat to the solipsistic indie rock of Silkworm (though lines like “It’s kinda strange, kinda painful, not to be there when it’s done” miss the specificity of that band’s lyrical wit), while “Coward” shimmers with the distorted haziness of Duster’s “Echo, Bravo,” closing with a scorching guitar solo that rivals Built to Spill’s fiercest moments.
Thousandaire’s lyrical concerns are hard to parse, as Wiggins’s lethargic croon struggles, sometimes in vain, against the band’s raucous instrumentation. Whatever fragments of meaning that can be discerned, though, reveal a resigned, curmudgeonly bluntness: “That’s a hat you wear to a beach, not to a bar,” Wiggins mocks on the lumbering “Bar Song,” adding that “those are words you say when you’re rich, they don’t make you smart.”
In the end, Thousandaire’s spin on familiar sounds feels both colossal and tossed-off. Ideal Conditions evokes the thick, enveloping space rock of Hum just as often as it echoes the stripped-down emo of Seam. If anything can be held against the group, it’s that they perhaps emulate their stylistic forebearers a little too closely. Still, Ideal Conditions serves up its thrillingly loud and impeccably produced mope-rock with so much sturdy songcraft that you likely won’t mind that it doesn’t even try to reinvent the wheel.
Since 2001, we've brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or fees.
If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a donation.
