Time Just Stops When You’re In My Sight

Shudder to Think “Thirst Walk”

This is Shudder to Think’s first single since 1998. Aside from a few brief reunion shows, they’ve been broken up longer than Sabrina Carpenter or anyone in Geese has been alive.

I imagine it can be tricky to come up with new material after that much time apart. How could you not be self-conscious about it? How do you sound like Shudder to Think again, and what does that mean to you now?

And which version of Shudder to Think should you sound like? The proto-emo Dischord Records version, the twitchy quasi-prog Pony Express Record version, the smoothed out neo-glam 50,000 BC version? Do you risk putting off old heads–likely the only people paying attention–and do something radically different?

And can you still do it? Craig Wedren and Nathan Larson have been making music for film and television for decades now, and have become stylistic chameleons. Maybe they’ve grown too accustomed to creative independence to write together again?

It could be any of these neurotic brainworms, or maybe it’s just like riding a bike. Shudder to Think could have had these anxieties, but “Thirst Walk” sounds like they’re riding the bike.

“Thirst Walk” sounds exactly like Shudder to Think, as though there could be no other outcome of Wedren and Larson and drummer Adam Wade making music together. They answer the question of which version of the band to be by being all three at once. Wedren’s voice soars, swoons, swirls, and somehow winks. The rhythm is as jagged and spiky as a song can get while retaining a suave glammy strut. And there’s a few new moves in the mix – a cheeky little solo towards the end that’s as flirty as Wedren’s singing, and bit of vocoder that seems tossed in for the element of surprise.

So really, it’s more than “like riding a bike again.” It’s like they got back on it and immediately starting doing flamboyant BMX tricks.

Buy it from Bandcamp.