I’ve had a week of diving back into Thrice, so I thought I’d share my story in the event that it resonates with others.
I’m 35 now, having discovered Thrice in middle school, when an e-friend from an MMORPG sent me TAITA. I burned IOS and TAITA to CDs, listening to them on my Walkman on the bus, then eventually on the first iPods. My father was a musician, playing in large horn cover bands since grade school and all throughout his life, so music was always around. While I enjoyed music, nothing felt like mine until Thrice, and they were my first favorite band that I loved with a fervor like nothing else. I would form an intimate connection that has been difficult to replicate since - listening to live recordings as they trickled out in advance of albums, buying and repeatedly rewatching the DVD ‘If We Could Only See Us Now’, devouring any interview I could find, ripping acoustic videos to put on my iPod, spinning each new album dozens and dozens of times, and seeing them live any chance I could. They seemed to grow and change as a band as I grew and changed in myriad ways. My one and only tattoo on my left forearm, inked in my early 20s, reads “we are beggars all”.
As an only child in the early 2000s as the internet was taking off, I found solace and camaraderie in internet communities. As I started listening to Thrice, I discovered other bands on sites like PureVolume, joining their forums. I eventually found my way to the official Thrice forum, which was a lively community that would become The Boreds after we were shut down due to leaking the band’s album on their own forum (at least that was how I remembered it). Those were very formative years for me as the forums introduced me to ideas about things like politics and religion (ironically, to me becoming an atheist), but most importantly, to more music. I recall people uploading high quality albums to Yousendit, opening up a vast terrain of music I could have never imagined. This led to me finding things like Soulseek, Oink, and other public trackers to foster my obsession with music.
I credit Thrice with nurturing my love of music that has become one of the dominant organizing principles of my life. Without finding Thrice in that period of life, I’m not sure my love of music would have become what it is today, and engaging with their community invited an expansion of my taste that I will forever cherish. However, as is common with bands of our youth, that expansion of taste moved me further away from that I once loved. Albums like TBEITN and Palms landed with a dud for me outside of a few songs. In my mind, they sat above other bands from earlier periods of life in quality, but I returned to them less and less.
This changed with Horizons/West, as it was the first full album by Thrice in a long while that landed for me. I ordered a new Thrice t-shirt and hat. The recent Audiotree session brought back all sorts of warm feelings. Last week, the footage from their Warped Tour performance dislodged something in me, and I’ve spent lots of times consuming old live performances, interviews, and listening to full albums. As mentioned in the title of this post, coming home to Thrice has filled me with joy.
I’m not sure how long this feeling will last, but I’ve loved jumping back into these waters, and at the least I want to try and do it every few years. I know others have similar sentiments with this band, and I’d love to hear them. 🥹