“Wings of steel, cold neon lights, I can’t breathe anymore.”
When I first heard “Casanova”, I didn’t quite know what I thought. While instrumentally it wasn’t as far a cry from their earlier work as many fans decried, vocally there was something I had to grasp, so to speak. The glitz and glamour were amped up, which were only exacerbated by the track’s extravagant visuals. It was quite a change to take in. Over time, however, something started to click. “Casanova” started working. Before I knew it, I couldn’t get the song out of my head. Its infectious, attitudey vocals combined with its hard-as-nails riffs truly struck a chord with me around my fifth or sixth listen. Admittedly, that’s quite a lot of stock to put into a tune I wasn’t sure about, but I’m glad I did, as “Casanova” now stands as one of my favourite Thornhill tracks to date.
That said, though, it left me wondering what to expect on their then-unannounced record (that we now know as Heroine). It wasn’t until second single “Arkangel” that I truly got a grasp on what they were trying to do with their rejuvenated sound. It wasn’t all that stark a difference, after all. The ethereal qualities, the djenty riffs and the big choruses present on The Dark Pool were still here, just recontextualized into something… weirder. At this point I was more than down for the ride, though, and while I may understand some peoples’ hesitancy in getting on board initially, I think the spectrum of sounds Thornhill crafted on these singles, and the entirety of this new project in Heroine are something truly unique and gratifying.
Opening tracks “The Hellfire Club” and “Leather Wings” immediately demonstrate that Thornhill aren’t here to confine themselves to any one particular sound. Opening Heroine with lush, reverb-soaked instrumentation and soaring, belted vocals on the former of the two tracks, the sense of security is soon broken by the contrastingly punishing heaviness of “Leather Wings”. With pacey, angular riffs and the brief appearance of some brutal screamed vocals in its breakdown, “Leather Wings” is a goliath of a track to stick at the front end of your record. Defying expectations like this seems to be their intent, however, as the record weaves in and out of various styles and genres through its 11-track runtime. Even through this, however, there’s still something so distinctly Thornhill about the whole affair.
While the album’s singles all place fairly close to each other mid-album, singles “Casanova” and “Hollywood” are broken up by another curve ball: “Something Terrible Came With The Rain”. A swirling two-and-a-half minute intermission to provide a sense of space and breath between two of the album’s most intense tracks, “Something Terrible…” is a gorgeous foray into one of Heroine’s key strengths: its cinematics. Both here and on the album’s masterful closer and title track, “Heroine”, the inclusion of strings and, at times, full orchestral arrangements add a huge sense of emotional weight and scale to the record. The album’s closing moments contain some of the most gorgeously sombre strings I’ve heard all year, and it really helps in adding to the truly climactic feeling of that final track.
With Heroine, Thornhill have crafted something truly unique, and incredibly bold. An album that is wholly, unapologetically them, with no caveats or compromises. Its influences are clear, but it’s the way those influences converge on Heroine that make it such an enthralling listen. Be it the danceable, Arctic Monkeys-inspired riffwork of “Raw”; the shoegazey glitz of “Varsity Hearts” or “Blue Velvet”; or the blistering aggression of “Leather Wings”, Heroine is a spread and spectrum of Thornhill’s best, most true and most engaging tracks to date. While I do sympathize it can be a challenging listen at first, once you get down to what makes this record tick, there’s nothing quite like it.
9.5/10
Heroine will be available next Friday, June 3rd via UNFD, and you can find pre-orders here.