"Nothing Like Our Picture"
Finding fans from every genre of music
The Minneapolis/St. Paul-based Thinmen makes a significant musical departure from the
Midwestern norms of folk, punk, and jangly rock. Instead, this unique trio takes
the smart, fun, and dancy vibe of early New Wave, and crosses it with Jazz and
Indie-Pop elements.
Listeners are sure to appreciate the pop sensibilities and
world music influences of great musical pioneers like David Bowie, Peter Gabriel,
and David Byrne in Thinmen's sound. Thinmen's latest CD "Nothing Like Our
Picture" marks the band's first foray into CMJ and Secondary Radio.
While recording "Nothing Like Our Picture", Dave Alstead, Doug Christianson and Will Jacobsen had a dangerous thought:
What would happen if they let each song dictate its own style, nuance, and even the
its own instrumentation...?
So Thinmen recorded this CD by letting each song write its own rules. They did
not force the songs into a pre-defined cubby-hole. What was the result?
"Nothing Like Our Picture" is full of songs about love, hatred, wonder, fear, forgiveness,
questions, fun, obsession, sex, religion, self-reflection... each told in their own alternative,
electronic, percussive, gritty, sensible, eerie, poppy, easy, lumbering, light, acoustic, mellow,
harsh styles; and then they threw in a fusion-based cover of "Shock The Monkey" by Peter Gabriel,
and a goth-electronic cover of "Stand Or Fall" by The Fixx for good measure.
The resulting CD is as varied and unique as the songs!
These guys cover a lot of bases on this disc, they're mature and experienced players who know what to play and when to play it, and all fans of this type of music should pick this up immediately. Great job, guys. Jon Gingrich, Ear Candy Mag
You guys have a unique way of writing catchy songs which I could imagine hearing on the radio, but which are also evocative of the more epic endeavors of the likes of Genesis, Peter Gabriel, etc. I hear things in your songwriting which I long to achieve. Chris Mitra
Very powerful and grabbing, Breathe (from Nothing Like Our Picture - ed.) makes you breathe a sigh of relief, that there does exist some really good music out there. Sometimes it takes a while to come across it and when you find a gem like this one, you dont want to let go.
Loren MacDonald, GodsOfMusic.com
