The Soldier Thread

OK, we'll come clean and admit we're a little late to the game. We heard all the scuttlebutt about The Soldier Thread. We ignored it. Then we read a couple of these blog posts up on Vivogig. We continued to ignore them. Then we saw some of their vids. Ignored them some more. Then one day, giving into the avalanche of positive vibes, we hunted 'em down on Grooveshark, selected "In Spades", and turned that into the soundtrack for our normal cubeland work.

And as time went by, we began to notice that our work ethic had vanished. We were distracted, in an excellently major way, by the new soundtrack.

That's them, that's the culprits right there. Left to right, we've got guitarist/vocalist/keyboardist Todd Abels, drummer Drew Vandiver, singer/viola-ist/keyboarder Patricia Lynn, bassist Chance Gilmore, and guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Justin McHugh.

These guys have been doing their distracting thing since 2007, gigging through our better establishments and releasing a string of excellent recordings. In another era, they'd been called A Rock Band, but nowadays it's called indie-pop: The "pop" for their accessible, easy-to-love style; the "indie" for their not-on-a-major-label status.

(Photo by Christian DeVoe.)
Now that "pop" label suggests a simple sugar high, but that's not The Soldier Thread. No, these guys generate unique melodic numbers, laid atop the concrete slab of familiar chord progressions and a solid rhythm section. Check out the excellent "Fractions" to see what we mean:

You might have caught a glimpse of their penchant for drama in that one. Check out the spell-binding "I Won't Stop You" to see how far they'll go to nail that cinematic feel:

Notice the clever use of guitar and keys on top of that viola to conjure up emotion. Here's another dramatic one - Check out the creepy feel the dissonant viola gives the harmonic "So In Love" (be sure to stick around for the build-up about 1:30 in):

Normally, these kinds of compositions would be enough to get you called "good". But what pushes The Soldier Thread into the "great!" category is Lynne's vocal chops; topping off their numbers like the whip cream on your milkshake. (Sorry, it's been a very hot summer.) Check out this clip to see what this girl can belt out:

They've just completed an "acoustic" tour with Blue October, and one of their first gigs back in town was a blow-em-away set at Stubb's that folks are still talking about. And their calendar remains active through September, with gigs here (at Frank on 8/26/11), Dallas, and Houston. Maybe this is the month you latch hold of The Soldier Thread?

Everyone loves their latest, "In Spades", and you need to hear it. So pardon our hand-built Grooveshark Widget and the probably-incorrect track order (we couldn't find a pre-existing embed-able player), and enjoy it:

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Turns out that, at this point in time (August, 2011) "In Spades" can't be had, not on Amazon, not on iTunes. So let's leave you with their latest attainable release, "Shapes", up on BandCamp:

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Find out more about The Soldier Thread on FaceBook, Twitter, BandCamp, YouTube, and Home Base.

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