Thunderegg

Praise for C’mon Thunder:

Thunderegg powers his poppy musical adventures with killer lyrics, creating engrossing stories at each turn, forming a sort of pop literature if you will. —PopMatters

I could drive for hours, watching the country roll by under my tires, through towns and states, to this album and never think twice about it. —Nanobot

C’mon Thunder awakens something that has been dead, or at least hibernating, inside of you. It reminds you of a time when music was just music, nothing more. Georgantas and company manage to awaken this entity while channeling REM, Elliot Smith, and Guided by Voices, while retaining their independence, originality and distinction from the crowd of wannabes. —Buffalo Blog

C’mon Thunder is Georgantas at his storytelling peak. He has a gravitas about him as a lyricist that is profoundly inviting. —In Your Speakers

Georgantas’s . . . knack for turning a phrase, for choosing the precise words to wittily describe his rueful, penetrating observations, is remarkable and makes repeated listenings all the more rewarding and reflects a lifetime dedicated to words and language. —Speak into My Good Eye

Praise for Open Book:

“Open Book might be one of the best bargains in rock history.” —PopMatters

“I implore you, [Open Book] is a must own.” —The Perm and the Skullet

“[Open Book is] probably one of the most essential music items so far (so-fa) in the 21st century.” —Southcoasting

“We should all leave a legacy on this world so impressive.” —Chromewaves

Just praise in general:

“Just listen to the first song and you’ll buy in. Thunderegg’s lyrics express the humor of real life situations, new-found love, bad baseball announcers, and daily life in simple songs with sweet melodies.” —My Old Kentucky Home

“Georgantas’s melodies sound effortlessly executed, like he simply exhales…unusually catchy and inviting tidbits.” —New Haven Advocate

“By turns humorous and earnest, the band glows with an easy lyrical and musical intelligence.” —Splendid

“The songs are smart, playful, melodic, and masterfully crafted…. Thunderegg is everything indie was meant to be.” —4F

“Bedroom rock that’s smart but not smarmy, emotional but not evasive, Georgantas has an authentic, level-headed approach to songwriting and lyricism that kills softly with its song.” —Perfect Porridge

“This is the kind of band that the Indie scene is all about, a great band giving it all back to the listeners. This band deserves your love!” —Waxfruit - Various

THUNDEREGG
Universal Nut [tape] (self-released) 1995
New England Music [tape] (self-released) 1996
Personnel Envelo-file [tape] (self-released) 1997
Thunderegg [tape] (self-released) 1997
Powder to the People (self-released) 1998
In Yanistin (self-released) 2000
The Envelope Pushes Back [tape] (self-released) 2000
Sweetest One: The Three-Track Demos [tape] (unreleased) 2004
A Very Fine Example of What's Available at the Mine (self-released) 2005
Open Book: The Collected Thunderegg, 1995-2004 (self-released) 2006

Starting out at college in Connecticut but more recently based in New York and New Jersey, Will Georgantas has, for more than a decade, been prolific bedroom music auteur Thunderegg. After releasing a small shelf of cassettes in micro-quantities (we're talking single or double digits), he put nearly the whole megillah — 213 songs — on one seven-hour CD of MP3s, Open Book: The Collected Thunderegg, 1995-2004, packaged with a handsome annotated lyric book. (The disc is playable only on a computer drive, not a component or portable CD player.)

For the most part, the songs on Universal Nut are solo voice and acoustic guitar, both of them serviceably pleasant but not striking. While the songs are likewise melodically more functional than memorable, Georgantas' lyrics are what stand out, scanning like well-written (and forthrightly honest) letters without benefit of choruses or typical verse structure. "Today is your birthday / I bought you an envelope / It sits open on my bedroom floor / I wanted to fill it with a message of hope / But I don't have any hope anymore." Amid the romantic unease and despair, the dormitory ballad "I Wish I Had a Stove" offers a humorous respite.

The more electric New England Music ups the ante with such "studio" effects as multi-tracking, distortion pedals and incidental noisemakers other than guitar and voice. What's more, the lyrics find all sorts of surprising things to appreciate and attack. "Edgar Martinez" castigates the Seattle Mariner infielder for hitting so well against the Yankees. The words "Rack & Pinion" drive the song of that title, while the resentful and tuneless "I Was an Intern at Spin" gripes "I was the lowest form of life there is," and the noisy science fiction of "Vorion Promises a Spectacle of Power" is just flat out hard to explain.

By Personnel Envelo-file, Thunderegg is starting to sound a bit like a band, with regular multi-tracking, droney keyboards, vocal processing, minimal drum machine percussion and electric guitars that he does more than just strum. The lyrics are likewise less direct, bordering equally on silliness ("I wanna know how the mail works / I wanna hang out with the mail clerks"), profundity ("Wish I was a windmill, pull energy straight from the sky") and random fantasy (Brian Wilson's death in "Wilson Calls It Quits"). Quantity still trumps intrinsic quality in Thunderegg's world, but the flashes of ingenuity and the sheer volume of material makes this blog-like musical outpouring something to behold.

Although hindered by distortion in the recording, the Thunderegg tape achieves a complete new level of musical sophistication, rarely suggesting that it's the work of a single person. Georgantas has settled into a band format, with bass and drums throughout, and wisely dispenses with the experimentation of Personnel Envelo-file in favor of subtle, detailed arrangements and more enduring melodies (the wistful love song "Christina Stopped Playing Her Violin"). The result is the most consistent and convincing Thunderegg release to date. If only the fidelity were equal to the artistry.

Powder to the People and In Yanistin are different from their predecessors, consisting predominately of brief (a minute, give or take) instrumentals that are gentle and pretty, though well-propelled. (Powder's "Theme for Meat Preparation" is one noisily aggressive exception; In Yanistin's darkly atmospheric organ extravaganza "Thunder in the Snow" is another.) Lovely stuff, although the effect, in toto, is a bit aimless, more melodic sketches in various cultural idioms than finished songs. The vocal tracks are very neat, however: the hard-rocking "Masterpieces Linger Daily" and "She's Been There All the Time," which appear consecutively on In Yanistin.

The Envelope Pushes Back (a witty notion that the song of that title, disappointingly, does nothing with) returns to the full-length song format with excellent results. If the previous two projects were a time-out for Georgantas to recharge his odd lyrical batteries, it worked. Highlights: "In the Loft," "The Second Coffer" and "Ceiling Fan."

Typical of Georgantas' torrent of music, the 12 songs on Sweetest One, which were recorded between 2000 and 2004 and lack drums ("This may happen yet"), are otherwise unissued. After all that, Open Book concludes with a needless album's worth of brief (and mostly trivial) bonus rubbish (an unaccompanied and annotated vocal, phone messag - The Trouser Press (Ira Robbins)

Obscurity holds a certain preciousness in the arts. When a listener comes across an album or a song by a little-known and long-defunct band, or by a provincial group that has hardly left its remote hometown, or in a handmade format clearly not meant for mass consumption, that discovery feels unusually special and exciting.

Thunderegg's recent public flowering, via the 2005 album A Very Fine Sample of What's Available at the Mine and the '06 retrospective Open Book: The Collected Thunderegg, 1995-2004, twists the whole "precious artifact" situation. For one thing, we're presented with not a great lost album but an entire recorded legacy. Thunderegg was, for roughly a decade, the nom de four-track of singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist (and mid-'90s Advocate intern) Will Georgantas, who recorded and self-released eight albums while living in New Haven, New York City and Hartford; Open Book collects most songs from all eight albums, plus bonus tracks, in mp3 format (that's 231 tracks). For another thing, Thunderegg isn't special just because of the records' obscurity—the songs are often really good. Georgantas' melodies sound effortlessly executed, like he simply exhales, or stumbles upon while playing his guitar or keyboard, unusually catchy and inviting tidbits. His lyrics are wordy but unpretentious, clever but not grating, and natural-sounding enough for entire verses to go by at times before the listener realizes he's actually rhyming.

Cloaking sadness and anger in literate humor and deceptively bright melodies, the one-man Thunderegg at times recalls early They Might Be Giants; the breezy melodies and loping rhythm guitar recall Loaded-era Velvet Underground, and frequently the chord changes and countermelodies bring the Beatles to mind. But referents aside, what Thunderegg most sounds like is, simply, one guy, a couple of guitars, a keyboard, a drum machine, an active mind mulling over a series of girlfriends, and a bedroom recording technique sounding more professional with each successive album.

There's another difference between Thunderegg and the average "artifact" band—they're an active unit, still playing and recording. In some regards, they're more active than ever: For the first time since sometime in the '90s, Thunderegg is a full band, one that plays shows. A Fine Sample, the full band's recorded debut, reprises ten songs from Georgantas' back catalogue, and not one is a dud.

It's not fair to say that A Fine Sample is necessarily an improvement over the earlier versions of these songs. It's also not fair to describe the contents of Open Book as "demos"—many of the songs are much too intricately arranged for that. Rather, A Fine Sample simply offers an alternate take on these songs. While Georgantas sounds heartbroken or angry on the early versions of some of the more emotionally bare songs, he sings as if smiling proudly all through A Fine Sample. The band's album loses some of the artier angles of the earlier versions, but it gains the rush of a real rock band, as well as more confident musicianship. The new album loses the intimacy of Georgantas' demos—one of the most rewarding aspects of one-man-bandism—but it gains the loose feel of a band that's just learned a batch of songs and is still excited about them.
- New Haven Advocate

Will Georgantas, the man behind Thunderegg, has undertaken over the last 10 years what can only be described as an inspired and single-minded artistic journey. Open Book, a marathon compilation that documents his artistic travels through the vehicle of 213 songs (just short of nine hours worth of music), is at its best a captivating and often deeply moving listen.

The first two albums (Universal Nut and the slightly more edgy New England Music) are beautiful, delicate compilations, serving in part as an obituary for Georgantas’ previous band. Rough, raw, mostly acoustic and often out of tune, Thunderegg’s lo-fi, lullaby ethic is at once enraging and endearing. The songs are fragile, bruised, battered (‘New England Music’, ‘Birthday Envelope’ and ‘Hold Myself Up’), funny, self-conscious (‘I wish I Had A Stove’), hilariously observant (‘Other People’s Coffee’) and not in the least ephemeral (‘Ephemeral’).

Personnel Envelo-file marks a distinct development. Without doubt the album still sits firmly in the lo-fi camp, but the noticeably cleaner production and spiky arrangement of opening track ‘Cop On A Horse’ is an immediate jolt to the system and sets something of a precedent maintained by the irritating They Might Be Giants-esque catchiness of ‘How The Mail Works’, ‘Windmill’ and ‘Old Girlfriendses’. This aside the album is permeated by quality songwriting and a sustained warmth that suggests there is still a person behind the drum machine and fuzz bass, and irrespective of any criticism, it’s worth an hour of your time just for ‘Double Reverse’ and ‘Wilson Calls It Quits’.

1997’s Thunderegg preserves the peak and trough variety of Personnel Envelo-file, but perhaps with a lighter touch on the metaphorical musical steering wheel. Amongst the intermittent trademark quirk and peculiarity there is a reversion to the perfect pop sensibility and whimsy that dominated Universal Nut with ‘Christina Stopped Playing Her Violin’, ‘Of Such Is The Kingdom of Heaven’ and ‘You Forget You Get Wet’ making sense of the record’s weaker moments.

Powder To The People and In Yanistin, are mostly instrumental and a touch patchy, the former finding its author lacking direction and perhaps struggling for words (some of the music not-so-mysteriously turns up in song form on later recordings). A brave departure into lo-fi surf rock, “a transition in subject” to quote Georgantas, or a few too many nice ideas left undeveloped, I’m not sure, but Powder To The People is certainly a low point as far as this otherwise mighty collection is concerned. In Yanistin is altogether more cohesive, its forlorn semi-acoustic instrumentals brimming with the same sensitivity that Georgantas commands through song – hear ‘I Will Never Suffer Again’, ‘The Western Sieve’ and ‘The Envelope Pushes Back Demo’ for the evidence. But for all the sensitivity, there is nothing more isolating than the cavernous reverb that concludes the prophetically entitled ‘Aim At The Night’ or the empty hopelessness of the cyclical title track (one of only a handful of fully-formed songs included here). Deeply personal, often difficult to connect with, yet exceptionally moving and rewarding given time, In Yanistin documents perfectly an artist grappling with self-doubt.

2000’s The Envelope Pushes Back and 2004’s Sweetest One between them pull together the strings of history into one rather fantastic ball of resplendent twine. The essence of Envelope… is summed up in the glorious ‘If I Went On A Diet’ – a love song to end all love songs with the bass line to end all bass lines. Sweetest One is by comparison an exercise in simplicity – drumless, melodic and void of the very personal expression of suffering I’d rather got used to after 7 hours. The euphoric ‘Long Way From Home’ paints a beautiful picture of how the memory of what has passed can replace the emptiness of even our darkest, most lonely moments, a sentiment affirmed by the honest yet hopeful ‘Plaza Song’.

So having dragged my sleeping bag, flask of tea and a week’s supply of chocolate digestives to the computer in order to report back to you folks on nine hours-worth of music, I guess the questions are ‘was it worth it?’ and ‘have I done it justice?’ I don’t think I could have even started to do this record justice.

The sheer width and breadth of it can’t be summed up in a couple of hundred words. What I hope I have done is give you enough information in this whistle-stop tour to at least persuade you to give Thunderegg a chance and that, although there is probably music within this monster of a collection that will pass you by, this fact is easily outweighed by Will Georgantas’ knack for inspired, empathetic song writing. Be selective, bung 80% of this on your MP3 player and you’ll have music for every occasion on tap for at least the next year. [five stars out of five]
- music-news.com

This is easily the most ambitious and overwhelming submission I've gotten in ever. It's a 108-page booklet and data CD-ROM (not an audio disc) containing eight of Thunderegg's albums plus bonus tracks - all told, over 530 minutes of music. It's like a pocket-sized box set. The liner notes are filled to the brim with lyrics for every song and charming little illustrations and a helpful table of contents for the whole package. Since there's no real practical way to listen to 232 tracks (besides actually listening to them all), I went with a random sampling approach and was really surprised how consistent and good everything I heard was - some tracks are short instrumental pieces and nothing is really epic length, but there were no throwaways or blatant filler. The Egg is absurdly prolific but not at the expense of quality control. There's a definite lo-fi, 4-track cassette aesthetic going on and that, plus the songwriting style, elicits some rather obvious Guided By Voices and Neutral Milk comparisons, but there's far worse points of comparison. Will Georgantas, he who essentially is Thunderegg, has true melodic gift and a wry, humourous (but not jokey) lyrical touch. I don't know how long it'll take me, but I intend of someday getting through everything here on the CD. We should all leave a legacy on this world so impressive.

And I swear my decision to write this record up this week had nothing to do with Stereogum doing the same a few days ago. Really.

- Chromewaves