Devolving the Guitar
For
No Devolución, Thursday’s guitar team
endeavored to unlearn the guitar—to
almost completely deprogram their whole
style, only occasionally bringing in their
familiar melodic impalement. “Not every
song has that,” Pedulla says, “but we really
like to have a wide dynamic range in terms
of getting real quiet and clean—and then
really heavy. It’s a keystone of what we do,
for sure. A good example is on the last song
on the record, ‘Stay True.’ It does the same
thing but in a completely different way.”
The song in question begins with an electric
guitar that’s so gently picked it’s almost
imperceptible. The drums enter, followed
closely by a flood of EBowed feedback in
the background. There’s a tension that sits
underneath the calm and, three minutes
into the seven-minute epic, Rickly’s voice
becomes histrionic and the guitars build up
along with the pummeling drums. Though it
never reaches the abrasive levels of previous
material, there’s a simmering darkness that
never would’ve come across in the vicious
heaviness of their older material.
Pedulla and Keeley are happy to discuss
some of their favorite guitar moments on
No
Devolución, as well as how they managed to
get some of the more out-there sounds on the
record. The first track, “Fast to the End”, has
a wild noise solo—a warped, Tom Morello-esque
skittering across fluctuating pitches. “It
was a lot of fun to do—and I’m actually wondering
how I’m going to recreate it live—but
I know I’ll figure it out,” Pedulla says. “I had
set up various filter and modulation settings
on one of those Line 6 M13s, and I also put
some parameters into the expression pedal to
control each one. So I would hit a chord and
switch back and forth between the different
settings and also work the expression pedal.
On some of the takes, I wasn’t even aware of
the guitar—I would have it on the floor, hit
the note, and then just play the pedals with
my hands and kind of go for it. We started to
realize that when you go to this effect, it does
this thing and that’s a good opening, and
then when you go to this, that’s a great mid
section, and this is a good closing. So it was
almost directed improv.”
In comparison, Keeley contributes a beautiful,
slightly atonal melody to the skeletal
and haunting ballad of loss, “Empty Glass.”
But while the duo envisioned the type of
vibe you hear on the album, the way they
got it was actually a mistake.
Keeley (left) engages his bridge pickup and barres high on
the neck as Thursday’s
keyboardist, Andrew Everding, strums . . . you guessed it—a Telecaster with a Duncan
Hot Rails bridge pickup. Photo by Elise Shively
“We recorded it during the last session,”
says Keeley. “Geoff had the vocal part and
the Hammond organ part and not much
else. We knew we needed to finish it, so it
fell on me to make the glitchy instrumental
sections. I was really excited about that, but
it was very frustrating to make, too. It ended
up as a clean guitar run through a reverb
pedal and a Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler.
Instead of strumming, I just turned the
reverb and gain up and fretted the string
with my strumming-hand finger. With all
that sustain, I was able to play the guitar
more like a violin. There were six layers
of the main progression and six layers of
harmonies, and that was going to be the
part—this forward-moving thing. But then
I accidentally stepped on the DL4’s loop
reverse-play button, and it was suddenly a
more powerful piece in reverse—with these
suspended melodies and a weird timing that
pulls you along in this uncertain way. The
sweet note of the progression is delayed just
a little bit too much, and at first I was like
‘Ah
man, I wish I’d taken that one set of four
beats out so it hit right where I wanted.’ But
everyone was like, ‘Dude, you’ve gotta leave
it—that’s what’s going to really engage people
and make them listen more intently.’” Keeley
adds that, if it hadn’t been for Fridmann’s
“writing doesn’t end until the mix is over”
ethos, there wouldn’t have been nearly as
many spontaneous moments like that.
But as Keeley previously mentioned,
No
Devolución isn’t all abstract soundscapes. The
whiplash switch-ups and intense guitar buildups
that have kept Thursday fans enthralled
throughout the band’s existence manifest
themselves in the savage shift from seething
fuzz to all-out saturation on “Past and Future
Ruins.” But even that has evolved.
“The chorus riff has a swing to it that we
haven’t had before. To expose myself a little
bit, it was my attempt at making a Silversun
Pickups song,” Keeley confesses with a laugh.
“I don’t think it sounds anything like them,
though—which is usually the story with me:
If I have a favorite band and I try to write
something like them, I’m usually not good
enough to nail it, y’know?”