for the record

Author: Emily Temple

It's the end of the year, and you know what that means. Well, among other things, it means that everybody you know is scrambling for all they're worth to finish the projects they've been working on all semester, all year, or - gulp - all of college. The number of plays, art shows, concerts and mind-blowing music festivals that went up last weekend alone probably rivals the number that have gone up all semester. There are also at least three new albums (that I know of) hitting the Proctor tables near you. The Dead Jettsons were out there promoting their new EP, What Future? the other day, and the boys from Market Zero are actually en route to the city as I write this to pick up boxes of their own album - four whole years in the making - the mysteriously titled Fire in the Mist. Another musical talent that has long been gracing our fair campus as a DJ, with a band and as one of the few people who understands how to use the production studio, is the incomparable Thompson Davis '08.

Thompson also has a brand-new album coming out in a future near you, another project that's been in the works for pretty much as long as I can remember. The semi-self titled Thompson should be rearing its sparkly head sometime in senior week, ready for your consumption, but I've been lucky enough to get a sneak peek at some of the tracks (here's a secret - you can too, if you do a little Facebook stalking) before the album hits Middlebury and beyond.

Much like Capstan Shafts, who played this weekend at WRMC's Sepomana, most of Thompson's songs are under (by a little or by a lot) the pop-song standard of three minutes and some-odd seconds long, a quality that can have a tendency to put people off - as soon as you start to get into the song, it inexplicably ends, leaving you high and dry. But though Thompson does have some tracks I wish would go on longer, his music seems very aptly primed for the emergent culture of sampling and mixing that is producing some of the most interesting material going on right now. I can already hear the delicious but tantalizingly truncated "bEAUTEOUS" as the lead-in to a sexy DJ set in a steamy club. That song also displays Thompson's pretty pipes in a way many of his others hide with distortion.

It's not only tiny tracks screaming to be sampled, however. The boy does know how to write a catchy pop song, invoking and entwining lilting soul, ska, electronic, art pop and plain old pleasant indie rock to form his own brand of quirky Thompson-music. In addition, the production values are better than I've heard from him ever before, and seriously enhance the listening experience. Some of the songs might slip into guilty pleasure territory, like the silly but catchy "Jackie pt. 2," which approaches sounding like an (albeit more inventive and less annoying) Blink-182, but the album also includes some seriously standout tracks. I dig "Platonicplanes" and "Spliffsong" which sound like pared-down Hot Chip or Cut Copy releases, and the lazy-rock sound of "I'm in Love with Myself." For social relevance, try "We Didn't Start the Fire (Save The Mill)," a title that should be pretty self-explanatory.

In the end, it's about fun and experimentation. Thompson has never been one to try to do anything but make music that he likes and that he thinks other people will like too. He's not about pretentious guitar riffs or super serious lyrics, he's about pretty sound-crafting with a sense of humor, something I think a lot of musicians - especially college musicians trying to make themselves into a real band - could use a little more of. So check it out. If you're into it, Thompson also has a show in New York City at the Broad Channel American Park in Far Rockaway, Brooklyn on May 31. Boy's going places.