Album Details

• Artist: Thursday
• Album: A City By The Light Divided
• Label: Island
• Year of Release: 2006
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: symphony on 2007-09-01

Really, what is one to say about Thursday? The band is built around Geoff Rickley's voice, the winding and powerful guitar lines, spectacular synthesizing, and the consistentcy they have of always managing to put at least one song about a car crash on their album. Scenesters/hipsters, ignore the strife the messageboards are plaguing you with concerning this album. They are all wrong about this album being Thursday's worst--far from it, it's probably one of their most enticing and cohesive releases.

Unbelieving people say 'what.' "What?" Ha! Starting off A City Divided By The Light is the prototypical car crash song, "Other Side of a Car Crash/Over and Out (Of Control)," which aside from its ear-drum murdering introduction, it probably has the most clever song title in the history of clever song titles (you lose, Panic! At The Disco!). Flowing into "Counting 5-4-3-2-1," you are really introduced to what the synth is going to be like over the course of the album. I think the words I would use to describe it are, "Hell yeah!" if I was at a concert. For the sake of this review, I'll settle for positively stellar.

You then move on to "Sugar in the Sacrament," the album's slow-paced ballad which is probably the lyrical masterpiece of 2006. The drums lead you in like a father giving away his daughter to the groom and then with the chorus, it's as if the groom punched the father and then with the end of the chorus, he vehemently apologizes. Leaving my piss poor metaphor behind and this song, you move into "At This Velocity," which sounds like a song straight off of "Full Collapse."

This album does have some faults. "Telegraph Avenue Kiss" is probably the weakest attempt at trying to show evolution ever, the song just doesn't fit in with the album. Also, all the intros sound like remixed versions of the other songs, it makes each song sound repetitive for about 15 seconds and only then can you differentiate. I guess it's a case of you win some, you lose some. Regardless these faults don't take away from the enjoyability of the album.

User Reviews and Comments

Review:

on 2007-09-01 kev_stev Said:

Great review! I definitely agree that this is a decent album, but it definitely slows down after "Running from the Rain." "Telegraph" is one of Thursday's worst songs, and I think that this album could've been better suited as like a 7 song EP than an entire album.
Rating: 7/10

Review:

on 2007-07-19 blackxdan Said:

I'm very sad to say, that this CD disappointed me. I dont think there are many good tracks on here. There are a select few that i feel are good songs, but even when i scroll across this album on my iPod, the only song i listen to is "At This Velocity". Only because that is the limit that i feel thursday could push before they went over into an entirely new genre which they were not experienced in yet. I would still recommend going with full collapse if you were to pick up your very first thursday album. But other than that, i say skip this album completely.
Rating: 5/10