Thus Love

THUS LOVE is a band, but also much more. The group from Brattleboro, Vermont, is united by a bond cemented by their experience as outsiders looking in. For THUS LOVE, DIY is first and foremost an ethical issue that reflects not only their musical vision, but also their very existence as trans/queer artists. From the beginning, the band lived together under the same roof, designed and produced their own merchandise and even created their own recording studio from scratch.

These days it’s easy to find inspiration. Streaming platforms and social media offer us endless fleeting moments of distraction that keep what we call the “pleasure zones” of our brains lit from morning to night. But for such a supposedly hedonistic time, real pleasure, the kind that feeds our soul rather than drains it, that makes us feel good rather than distract us from feeling bad, is incredibly scarce.

The second LP from Brattleboro, Vermont’s THUS LOVE is full of that kind of nourishing euphoria. She swoons, trembles and struts with a combination of grit and sensuality that’s been hard to find in music lately. It fills your brain with biting melodic hooks that once sunk in never move again. It hits the clouds and makes you want to do the same. It’s called, appropriately, All Pleasure.

The album was born out of a period of dizzying growth and transformation for the group. When they started working on it, singer/guitarist Echo Mars (they/them) and drummer Lu Racine (he/they) were still in shock from the runaway success of their 2022 debut album, “Memorial,” a mix of lush and elegant post-punk that received praise from The FADER, NME and Guardian, as well as a leap from quiet Brattleboro to stages across the US and UK, along with the processing of founding bassist Nathaniel van Osdol’s departure. Meanwhile, new bassist Ally Juleen (she/they) and guitarist/keyboardist Shane Blank (he/him), longtime musical partners, had upended their lives to move to a small town in Vermont and join a band that he was a month away from recording the follow-up to an album everyone adored. “We were all coming together to create this new thing and take a new step,” Marte says.

“We’ve all been making music for a while and we deal with exhausting and unpleasant aspects of it.” When the group reunited in a barn in the woods that Mars had converted into a recording studio that the band calls their “Hobbit Hole,” they kept one simple rule at the forefront: “If he’s not happy,” says Mars, “don’t do it”. What emerged from that simple mission is an incredibly beautiful album, with a whole range of perverse stylistic twists that will surprise listeners who only know the group for the hook-drenched ’80s-style psychedelia of their first album.

“Birthday Song” delivers glam rock grunge with a pace new to the band, but one that suits them perfectly, via a transcendent hook that highlights Echo’s lyrical homage to communal joy. “Get Stable” transmutes existential panic – “I can’t seem to stabilize / Is this what I’m afraid of?” – into edgy punk pop.

The title track, the last song written for the album and the first written by the entire quartet, is something of the record’s mission statement, with Echo and Ally splitting vocal duties while paying homage to the power of joyous creation : “I’m not high but I feel good,” Echo sings, “Like a drug but I don’t come down.”

Beyond simply being a great album, it also makes a compelling case for ditching the algorithm, going off the grid, and finding a barn to hole up in with some friends and a bunch of gear. Put on All Pleasure, tap into the energy and message that THUS LOVE is conveying and you might find an escape.