100 Greatest Songs of the 20’s So Far #40 Thus Love – Repetitioner

Released: 2022

Wherever you live, fewer things are more superficially attractive than small town living. Less noise, less pollution, cheaper things, more space – who wouldn’t want to at least give things a go out there, in a place where an amber light means slow down?

Nowhere is this more theoretically true than in America, but in practice that can mean living within a narrower set of ideals. Bohemian oases seem rare, but one such place is Brattleboro in Vermont, a town of 10,000 in which the members of Thus Love met and shared an apartment together. Recorded in these cramped surroundings, their debut album Memorial had, against the odds perhaps, a retro grandeur and confident sense of presence.

Threading myriad 20th century sources – period Simple Minds, The Chameleons and The Church to name just a few – Memorial was a vast noise, a spectral refugee from both city and country. It’s opener Repetitioner was a throwback to the side one, track one era it musically rubbed shoulders with, a time when sometimes the gesture was the point, but here was evidence that big doesn’t always equal empty. Credit this one to Main Street.