The Thousands

HEAVY PROFESSION is a rock record proper. It’s romantic and drunk on poetic absolutes like all good bleeding heart music should be. Everyday realities – friendships, money, the weather and love – come into it, but are always drawn through leader Jarrod Quarrell’s particular prism; his classic outcast’s vision that makes over the real world in boundless emotion, euphoria and uncertainty.

It’s this vision – grounded in the sincerity of Quarrell’s oblique storytelling – that makes a lasting impression on St Helens‘ debut album (aside from the band’s class playing and inspired, sequined bones-type arrangements).**Putting abstract pleasure or ‘kicks’ before everything is the songwriter’s ‘heavy profession’ and Quarrell’s permanent predicament. Both sides run parallel in standout song ‘Coffin Scratch’, with its swing from claustrophobic, here-and-now degradations in the verse to a weightless, sovereign feeling and wiping-out of anxiety in the break. The same duality finds voice in Hannah Brooks’ ever-present shadow vocal too, never harmonising but simply double-tracking Quarrell’s sentiments like the lovelorn flip of everything he describes. Sanctified, blood-and-mercy strength music for modern wandering Jews.