Story by Sosefina Fuamoli / Photo by Jon Pisani
A fresh sophistication runs through each groove and rhythm found on Bodies, the third album from Melbourne heavy group, Thornhill.
A pure balance of raw charisma and developed, primal instrumentation, the record is a perfect touchstone for the group who, until this point, have made a name for themselves within the Australian scene for continuing to take bold steps forward with each release.
Bodies, following on from 2022’s Heroine, boasts refined ambition and snarl – for anyone who has been able to see Thornhill perform in the last three years, this live energy and growth has been brilliantly distilled into the eleven tracks that thunder, growl (and in some areas, purr) throughout the album’s playback.
The production, deftly handled by Ocean Grove’s Sam Bassal, is a major key to the overall sound and arguably, success of Bodies so far. Incredibly tight production meets concise arrangement and songwriting here – offering an insight into a creative collaboration that has brought the best out of one of Australia’s most exciting heavy bands.
Thornhill have been releasing music since 2019: their debut album, The Dark Pool, positioning the group as a firebrand in the making. What was clear, even back then, was that Thornhill was a band unafraid to push themselves into creative spaces that may have felt uncomfortable or new.
Heroine proved another fleshed out example of this and with the recent release of Bodies, listeners and live music fans are able to witness Thornill experience a new moment of chrysalis in real time.
“We’ve never felt more excited about our own music, ever,” vocalist Jacob Charlton says.
“We’re shocking when we write music; we can’t help but hate it, because we made it. We can see the flaws within it. Whatever trauma package came with the album, we wear, you know? With this one, its whole purpose – inside and out – was to let it go. Just enjoy our first instinct and see how that translates.
Obviously, we know what’s wrong with it, but we don’t feel it in the negative way, like we’ve felt everything else. With this one, it translates to stage like nothing we’ve ever done before. It’s the best we’ve felt on stage with our own material.”
On tour in North America until the middle of May, Thornhill has been experiencing this part of the world through a new lens. Though they’ve toured the U.S. before, this headline run has seen sold out shows, as well as VIP experiences bring them together with their fans in ways the band didn’t even expect.
When we check in with Charlton, the band has made it to Baltimore: the tenth stop of the band’s twenty-six show run. From here, Thornhill will complete shows on the East Coast before heading into Canada and eventually, back Stateside, where the tour will continue until it wraps in California.
As Charlton explains, starting a tour with six sold out shows is of course, going to set the vibe for the rest of the band’s schedule moving forward. However, incorporating VIP experiences for fans to get more from the experience than just a show, has been an interesting way to determine just how much of an impact this Australian act is having beyond home.
“The turn out has been incredible, we feel very blessed,” he says. “It’s been crazy, actually. We’ve never done a VIP before, so that’s been pretty crazy. That’s definitely not a thing you do in Australia, we’ve never had any reason to do it. It’s been weird to get into the swing of that, it’s just so different.”
“That connection means a lot to us,” Charlton furthers. “This is the first time we’ve ever not done merch ourselves, we have a very good friend of ours doing merch now. A lot of the time, we’ll finish a show on a support tour, [Ben] Maida and I will come out and we’ll do merch together. We’ll see everybody and interact with everybody.
It’s just not a viable thing to do when you’re headlining, so the VIP has been a cool way to do that instead. You get real up close and personal with people, you still get that feeling of excitement and energy, but you get it before the show, instead of after!”
This American tour is providing Thornhill with the biggest of playgrounds to test Bodies out in. An album that has sharpened the band, not just as a writing unit, but a live band, Bodies presents itself as a delicious beast of a record for Thornhill to sink their teeth into on stage.
Already renowned for electrifying live performances, the Thornhill audiences stand to witness with the release of Bodies is a version of themselves that perhaps they are, to date, the most comfortable with.
Their natural confidence and dynamic is elevated here and can be heard on some of Bodies’ strongest cuts: from the intentional urgency of a song like ‘Revolver’, to the Deftones-esque sex appeal of tracks like ‘Silver Swarm’ and ‘Obsession’.
Bringing this music to the live space is something Thornhill have been champing at the bit to do for some time and now that time is here, the band is taking each moment to relish in the fruits of their labour.
“I think people can see that while we’re playing it. There’s some sort of atmosphere in the air about it, when we’re able to play those sorts of songs, compared to everything else.” Charlton says.
“We learn so much by touring and experiencing it ourselves. The Dark Pool, yeah, it’s a solid record, but it was hard to tour. We didn’t really enjoy playing it as much because it was so technical. Heroine was just so slow, so we didn’t really enjoy playing that one live. You just learn what you like from your own stuff.
It’s all well and good to read criticism from audiences and take that onboard, but I feel like as we are our own first listeners, we take our own criticism more strongly than anyone else’s. We’re the ones who have to play it.”
Prior to Bodies being created, Charlton was also developing his solo project: the electronic, alt-pop leaning venture, Vicious. Creating music for a genre that positioned his vocals front and centre with prominence that heavy music doesn’t always allow, gave Charlton the opportunity to push himself more.
Ultimately, he brought these lessons back to the table when it came time for Thornhill to be back in album mode.
“Ethan [McCann] and I collaborate a lot more now,” he says. “[Vicious] made me a better singer and it showed me new heights of my own voice that I could use for Thornhill. When it came time to write for Thornhill, a lot of those skills were right in front of me; I was able to more clearly help Ethan during the writing process.
We’re very much more in tune and expressive about what we can do. It doesn’t matter who came up with the idea, because we are Thornhill. It’s always made and produced by us. It took a lot of letting go of those outer layers, as we do with each record. We got in a room at Maida’s house, in his lounge room, and we were playing it all together. We were spitballing, there were no dumb ideas. It was like a big feedback loop.”
Of his own songwriting development with Thornhill, Charlton is open about how he improved as a lyricist and storyteller with this record. A lover of a good metaphor, Charlton isn’t above self-criticism, or at the very least, being able to identify where ideas have worked, and where they may have needed more work.
For him though, Bodies hits that sweet spot.
“My lyricism is an interesting one,” he admits. “I found on Heroine, people didn’t love the metaphorical side of the writing. A lot of my inspo is within that Renaissance-y, poetic stuff. I like the ability to not completely understand what a line or a song is, without research or without actually looking it up. That’s so much cooler to me.
I don’t want to just say, “I love you”. I want to yearn. I want all of these other ways to describe it, because it’s been done before! It’s cooler to have a metaphorical journey in the lyricism, but I do think that I didn’t do it as well as I probably could have on Heroine, and that’s fine. A lot of Bodies is me really pulling both sides of storytelling into one, but my process has remained the same: I freestyle and then I’d write the lyrics after that was done.”
Being able to divorce himself from the material enough to be able to dive deep on vulnerable emotions, without being immersed in them himself, has produced more open songwriting.
“A lot of this record was made in a very positive space. Even when I would write some of the sadder songs on the tracklist, I wasn’t doing it from a place where I was sad,” he says.
“I’m touching on it, almost method acting it, but keeping it far enough away from me so that we’re still enjoying it. You can get wrapped up in your own torture a lot with music. We’ve been there, we’ve done that – we don’t want to do that again.”
Looking forward, not back, is definitely the mantra Thornhill are propelling themselves into this new arc of artistry with. Though they’re still at the beginning of this album cycle, the fulfillment Bodies has so far provided has bred a new sense of invigoration into the band.
For Charlton, the concept of writing the next Thornhill album is one he’s hyped for (“We might come home and start it…”) but for now, he wants to focus on living in the moment when it comes to ratcheting the band’s live energy up another level.
Eschewing the sheen and polish of live productions that can sometimes strip a band and audience of a powerful and visceral live experience, Thornhill wants to make sure each show offers something memorable and different.
“I just want to keep having fun with it. I don’t want to keep being super serious, or super cool, whatever comes across,” Charlton enthuses. “I just want to get on stage and be a band like bands were when we were young. We grew up with [Australian music video show] Rage, we grew up with MTV; we grew up at the peak of heavy music being cool.
We talk about it all the time. It’s like, why the fuck do you want to go to a show and listen to Spotify? You should want to see a band fuck up live; you should want to see a band restart a song because someone missed a click. The best stories you can tell your kids or your friends, is that you went and saw a band who played their ass off. It was raw, it was in your face, it was right there in the moment. The Thornhill experience is to be as rough around the edges as possible, as real and as down to earth as we can possibly be.”
-----
Thornhill will return to the U.S. as part of both the Louder Than Life and Aftershock festivals in Louisville, Kentucky and Sacramento, California in September and October respectively. Catch the band on the remaining dates of their US headlining festival. Dates can be found below.
Bodies, the new full length studio album from Thornhill is now available via UNFD. Get the album - HERE
Thornhill US Tour Dates
4/29 - Montreal, QC - Theatre Fairmont
5/1 - Toronto, ON - The Velvet Underground
5/2 - Lakewood, OH - Mahall’s
5/3 - Ferndale, MI - The Loving Touch
5/4 - Chicago, IL - Bottom Lounge
5/6 - St. Paul, MN - Amsterdam Bar & Hall
5/7 - Kansas City, MO - recordBar
5/9 - Denver, CO - Marquis Theater
10/5 - Salt Lake City, UT - Urban Lounge
5/12 - Seattle, WA - El Corazon
5/13 - Portland, OR - Hawthorne Theatre
5/15 - Sacramento, CA - Goldfield Trading Post
5/16 - Anaheim, CA - Chain Reaction
