Fred Thomas is a key figure in southeast Michigan’s underground music scene and has been for decades, devoutly supporting Washtenaw County’s rich history of experimental music while always keeping one foot planted in thoughtful, lyrically driven rock. An avid collaborator, these days Fred provides psychedelic guitar ambience for Dr. Pete Larson’s Cytotoxic Nyatiti Band, and fronts Idle Ray– an energetic indie rock three-piece. He also runs his own label, Life Like. Two shows at North Star Lounge on October 21 will take a retrospective glance at his career, specifically celebrating his 2006 solo record, Sink Like A Symphony, which recently saw its first major reissue. The new version, remastered and on vinyl, comes complete with a trimmed down & reorganized tracklist.
Upon its premiere in 2006, Sink Like A Symphony found the Ypsi native about a decade into an already rich music career, from heading up the lo-fi, jangly math-punk anthems of Chore, to playing bass for Warren Defever’s legendary project His Name Is Alive, and more extensive touring as frontman of Saturday Looks Good To Me. Plenty of experience, then, to stop and reflect upon, and possibly why the tracks on Sink Like a Symphony read like a collection of Polaroids with poetry scrawled on the back. Each is a dreamlike diary entry from a time when Fred was giving more and more of himself to music. Across the record, there is a specific preoccupation with people and places from this era, out of which Fred always manages to construct expansive, prismatic metaphors.
A lot of this reflection gets done in and out of lilting guitar phrases like those in “O Sweet Undoing,” a reinterpretation of “O Sweet Lung” by Ben & Bruno, here with new lyrics. But it’s not all delicacy and subtle grace: sometimes, an intensity of feeling wells up, and sparse instrumentation gives way to cacophony. On “I Built a House,” Fred’s meditations and rudimentary strumming are slowly overtaken by a crescendo of strings, and then a cathartic drum freakout engulfs the whole thing like a late summer storm. “Wet as a Cloud” picks up where we left off, then quickly reigns it in to a tight folk jam that would be right at home on a Neutral Milk Hotel record. This euphoric energy is sustained over the next few tracks, which showcase Fred’s poetic chops by way of an emotional, top-of-his-lungs vocal delivery. Then, by the end of the album, Fred reels back for a sober look at where we are and where we’re going. In “The Curse Is Broken! On To New Curses!”, regret holds hands “with the rust of several civilizations.” A Zen notion: past mistakes are relegated to the ruins of ancient manmade structures, while we hurtle along, ever-changing, into the present.
Then, and especially now–with this well-crafted reissue–Sink Like A Symphony is more than a glance backward at old bedrooms and life on the road for a musician coming into artistic maturity: It’s a poetic catalog of the vivid emotions that fill our lives, a reckoning with change, and a step toward the next thing.