Description
Label Review.
2017 album. Deluxe edition with 100 Club Live.
Our Overview.
After 27 years in business (and occasionally out of it), Thunder are on a serious mission. In an era when most bands of their provenance are more concerned with sticking to a safe formula than with delivering music with impact and meaning, the London- and Brighton-based five-piece (Chris Childs (bass), Harry James (drums), Danny Bowes (vocals), Ben Matthews (guitars and keyboards), Luke Morley (guitars), are only concerned with doing their absolute best. Compromise is not on the agenda.
As their official website quotes from the band “"We’re running out of time to deliver our best work, because we’re getting older. I’m acutely aware of that," says singer, manager and radio presenter Danny Bowes. "For us it’s all about quality and value for money for our audience. It would be all too easy at this point to say, ‘The fans are there, the record company are paying for it, let’s just do a standard album’ but we hate that idea. The pressure is there to make everything as good as it can be. Everybody has to step up."
Through it all, Thunder survived – which leads us to Rip It Up, their eleventh studio album. It’s a record with big boots to fill, as Wonder Days raised the bar significantly for its creators when it came to creating a follow-up. Fortunately, Rip It Up steps up to that challenge with utter confidence, bringing 11 songs that cover a wide range of sounds and emotions to the rock territory of 2017.
"Rip It Up is certainly not Thunder by numbers: it was a real challenge to make," reflects Morley, who composed the songs and produced the album during the spring and summer of 2016 at Rockfield Studios in Wales. "Everybody had to think outside the box and leave their individual comfort zones. At the same time, it still sounds like Thunder – and to me, that’s evolution."
"Doing the new album this way cost more money, and it took a while to make, but it was the right thing to do," says the loquacious singer. "A lot of effort went in over a long period of time, especially for Luke, but having recorded Wonder Days that way and getting such great results, we took the same approach in the recording, and we all had to step up our performances to capture the new songs, but it worked. We made changes in the mixing and mastering, and both changes paid off.”
Morley adds: "You know, it’s very easy to make the same album and use it as an excuse to go on tour, but with us that’ll never happen. I always want to write better songs than I did last time. We may not have made our best album yet – who can say? You have to keep that in your sights and do the best you can.""I genuinely believe that our best work still lies ahead of us," states Bowes. "There’s more in Luke’s creativity that can be unlocked, and the band’s ability to capture his songs gets better with every record. Some may say that our best album is behind us, but I don’t believe it and I never have: I’ve always felt that the next album could be our best."