20th anniversary review: Thursday – “Full Collapse”

This review is part of a series looking back at significant albums on their anniversaries. Through the benefit of hindsight we will be viewing the album not just as it was released, but how it stands the test of time, as well as its place in the band’s discography and the genre in general.

Victory Records – 10 April 2001

Time can’t let this pass (The time it takes, the time it takes won’t let go)

When I saw that Thursday’s second album Full Collapse was coming up on its 20th anniversary, I originally felt rather indifferent.  I mean, I enjoyed the record immensely when it was first released.  Like, really enjoyed it.  But there is a big difference between teenage me and me at damn-near forty. After getting myself reacquainted with the Jersey boys though, I realized Thursday might be the impetus behind that change, at least partially. .

Thursday did what no other band had previously done to me.  It gave me an outlet I didn’t know I needed.  Sure, I’d listened to The Smiths for years by 2001, but I always classified Moz et al as merely crybaby music, a guilty pleasure and not something to openly admit to.  Full Collapse came along and slapped me across the face with a whole new level of feels.  The album unlocked a level of empathy I was unaware I had the emotional capacity to experience.

This is Thursday at its best.  Geoff Rickley’s psych dissertation provides lessons on pain, loss, gentrification and so many other things that I never had to consider in my podunk, vanilla town. Musically the ensemble compliment the whole brutal art of Rickley’s poetry with screeching riffs, shotgun drumming and a bloodbath of basslines.    

When “A0001” gave way to the gun-cocking sound of Tucker Rule’s drums opening lead single “Understanding in a Car Crash” it was an aural epiphany for myself and many others.  All at once, familiar and unorthodox, the band’s sound and legacy was cemented in that transition.  

Throughout the album, the band manage to be aggressive and melodic. I could fill volumes walking track by track through this album’s instrumentation and the brave steps that helped make Full Collapse a success in the scene and on the screen but I won’t. The real thing for me that makes the album stand so strongly is Rickley’s lyrics.  

Every Thursday fan I know can connect certain elements to their personal experiences.  The relatability makes the record indelibly timeless.  I can distinctly remember seeing Thursday prior to the release of Full Collapse play “Paris in Flames” and explaining how its based on a documentary about the drag scene of the day.  I knew that the day I bought the record and yet I still felt like it was speaking to directly to CIS-hetero, angsty me. I’m sure it wasn’t the first time I misappropriated lyrical content in my own self-serving ignorance, but this was the track where I knew I was doing it and couldn’t delude myself.  

Full Collapse changed me and I have to assume a similar response from many others.  This record taught me that sometimes the subjects we are least ready to broach in real life, are the ones we most need screamed in our face.  This may have come out a year (almost to the day) before my grandmother passed away, but having “Standing on the Edge of Summer” to fall back on helped me face my emotions without needing to take responsibility for my own words.A reviewer at the time infamously made some comment to the effect of Thursday needing to lighten up.  I’m so glad they didn’t.  Full Collapse is the collective catharsis of an overcrowded pit, deafeningly personified and fun just doesn’t belong in every dead man’s crescendo.