Ben caught up with Tom Keeley from Thursday to talk about their new album, the music industry in general and their current tour schedule.

You released your new album, ‘No Devolucion’, just over a week ago, I imagine things have been pretty hectic since then?
Tom Keeley (Guitar): It hasn’t been too bad just yet. There was a little bit of a pre-tour scramble to learn the songs because we hadn’t played them since we recorded them around six months ago. It’s been a mostly enjoyable process of getting to learn them again and getting everything sorted. Pre-tour is usually a bit of a scramble, but this has been no worse than usual.

I read that the title means “no returns” in Spanish, what’s the reason behind this? Were you nervous about how fans would react?
Tom: I would have been more concerned had we named it anything other than something that indicated it was something completely new. If we had named it some other title I think people would be expecting more of the same from us. This is not what this record is. It was one of those things that makes us fully committal. And to be fully committal you have to be completely honest with people about what to expect, and this record is not business as usual.

Would you say that it’s quite a tongue in cheek title in some respects?
Tom: We don’t really do much of the sarcasm, tongue in cheek thing. When Geoff (Rickly, Vocals) says: “’No Returns’ means you bought it, you got it.”, that’s kind of funny but it’s just an honest title for what we’re doing.

So, would you agree that this is your most experimental effort to date?
Tom: I think it’s the farthest reaching record we’ve written creatively. Sonically, I think we’ve done weirder things. People will hear a lot more of Andrew (Everding, Keys/Synth) on this record, but I feel like the stuff he’s doing, while different for our band, is a fully realised and more concise version of things he’s done in the past. So to me it’s less experimental and more committed than anything we’ve done in the past.

Was this a conscious decision? Do you feel that you’re at the stage of your career when you can mix things up a bit?
Tom: We’re very comfortable doing a record like this. It was always going to be a case that this record will be amazing or we won’t write it. If it’s not a leap forward then what’s the point? We’ve done steps forward for the last couple of records, while I felt like they were big steps for the band, compared to this we were just taking little steps forward.

You celebrated the 10 year anniversary of Full Collapse this year, how do you feel when you listen back to that album?
Tom: It definitely feels like a long time ago! Before we did the tour I would hear that record, and not to degrade anybodies opinion, but to me it sounded like a bunch of young kids. It sounded almost cartoonish if that makes sense? It sounds like it’s under water, all the guitar tones are super reverby and everything, I suppose that was cool for what it was. Before we started playing the songs live again I was really nervous, I didn’t know if I was going to connect to a handful of the songs because I feel so different now. Once we started playing them again I would see kids in the crowd who were literally seven when the record came out who were connecting with it for the first time. When we play that album live it’s a lot more visceral and heavy, it sounds more vicious live than it does on the record. When I realised that and got back into the swing of it, that’s when the excitement started coming back. It’s definitely a contrast, last night we played five new songs and then Full Collapse, and it was vastly different. Stark contrast has always been an important part of our band, so has interesting juxtaposition. To play ‘No Answers’ off the new record and then ‘Understanding in a Car Crash’ is interesting if you accept that there’s going to be contrast. If you’re not willing to accept that then it’s going to feel like night and day.

Do you find that the same fans have stuck with you since the days of Full Collapse and War All The Time?
Tom: Yeah, this record, more so than any we’ve released post-War All The Time has been the one where our die hard fans who wanted another Full Collapse have said that this record is the best we’ve released. People who have never liked our band, not indifferent, but really hated our band now really like this record, it’s so bizarre. It’s nothing we would have ever anticipated or calculated, it just kind of seems to be happening.

Did you ever anticipate Thursday lasting this long?
Tom: Not in the beginning. Once we kind of hit our stride, maybe a couple of years after Full Collapse was released. Maybe then I could have conceived of us still being around now. In the beginning we were just like: “Let’s take a semester off college, try and make it to California and back and if it doesn’t work then we’ll go finish school.” Thankfully one thing led to another and we never had to go back to school. People always ask me about what my five year plan is and where I see myself in ten years time, but I’ve always been awful with that stuff. It did take a while before I thought we could be going this long, I’ve never done anything for this long before!

Contrasting that, the band has recently spoken out about the financial difficulties faced by many artists, have there ever been times where you thought it would be easier to give up?
Tom: There were times, and we acted on it. I moved away and we all started dipping our toes into the job market to see where we could go. I applied for a job in a music store and realised that my only résumé outside of being a college drop-out was being in a band for ten years and my application got rejected. So I wasn’t qualified to work in a music store, what else could I do? I started doing extras casting work for TV with my girlfriend who is a casting director. I started assisting her which was a decent job and was sustaining on a low income level but after a while I decided I just wanted to write music with my friends. That’s the life I wanted to continue to carve out for myself. Everyone else had their own version of that, we tried our hands at normality and living a home life, but four months into it we figured that wanted to write music still. We knew we were poor but we could at least send demos to each other and try and make it work.

Do you see this as an industry wide problem?
Tom: Absolutely. I think you’ll noticed that a lot of the bands that jumped through the window that we were partly responsible for opening aren’t around any more. You realise that they were doing it for the business side of it, but once the money ran out they had to call it quits. It’s hard all around. Even a lot of the good bands fell victim to the economy. Not many people have the disposable income to throw at bands, the only way bands make money is by playing shows and selling t-shirts, not from record sales. People have stopped buying records and if people stop coming to shows it could get really scary.

Have you noticed massive changes throughout the time you’ve been active in the industry?
Tom: We never made money off record sales. Unless you’re one of the top ten bands in the world then you won’t make money from selling records, nobody sells them on a level that’s worth mentioning. It’s interesting to think that a good first week in 2006 was 90,000 records, now it’s crazy to imagine a band like us selling 10,000 in its first week. That’s the clearest indication that the business is dying and maybe it should, maybe until there’s a new paradigm it deserves to die. Hopefully the bands that are worth their salt can stick it through and become a part of the new model, whatever that may be.

You’re often credited as one of the bands responsible for the surge in emo/post-hardcore music, how does it feel to be a part of this?
Tom: It feels great to feel like you’ve had an impact on culture at large. As far as the genre, or the genre defining words at least, it doesn’t feel like anything. It can feel like a burden sometimes. When you’re having a conversation with a friend about a new band I can understand them using the word ‘emo’ if they don’t have the words to describe it accurately. Beyond trying to attract someone’s attention, I think it begins to detract from each person’s individual experience with the music. When someone says, “This band is an emo band.”, immediately in their head they think of twelve other bands or a list of rules and guidelines you have to follow to be that kind of a band. I don’t think we’ve ever really been proficient enough, technically or creatively, to actually follow those guidelines. We’ve always inherently ended up on the fringes of music styles, tastes and trends. Whilst I understand it will get you to look over here and listen to us, I hope that after that people would throw out what they thought it would be and have a point to point connection with what it actually is. People should figure it out for themselves, not be told how they’re supposed to feel about it.

You’re only in the UK for a couple of days before you head over to Europe, but do you enjoy coming over here?
Tom: We love it, it’s amazing. And the sun is out for the first time in the history of us touring here, it feels like summer! We love coming over here, it’s a really raw, crazy energy. The cities are much prettier, it’s great.

Finally, what does the rest of the year hold in store for Thursday?
Tom: Lots more touring. I thought for a second about starting a conversation with the rest of the guys about a song I was writing, but then I realised that the new record hasn’t even been out for a week! I think we’re just going to enjoy where we are for the time being. We’re going to be doing a lot of travelling, a US tour in the summer for two months and then back over here, we’re going to do a lot of jumping around.

Interview By Ben Connell