AllAboutJazz.com says of The Thing's album, Garage, "This is a disc you know you are going to love from the first sound of the pounding, kick-ass drums...It consists of high-energy, slightly extended covers of left-of-center art/punk songs and free jazz gems...adapting the garage rock aesthetic and breathing more life into songs than I thought was possible. You cannot but surrender to The Thing's heated energy."
The disc is certainly energetic - every note is played with heated fervor, though at times, overheated. It's similar to being used to straight rock, and then walking in on a Sonic Youth show. If you are tuned in to it, you get it. If not, you're pulling your hair out and digging your nails into your face. Their music seems to me less an expression than extraction, or an exorcism. There's something mean in there, and that shit is coming out one way or the other. I'm tuned in.
Having said all that, here's a tamer, accessible track: a cover of the Sonics' Have Love Will Travel. The AllAboutJazz article says this version "is covered in a tongue-in-cheek mode, keeping the original raunchy, rhythmic drive while Gustafsson switches between a soulful tenor delivery of the song's chorus and soloing in the upper registers of the instrument."
The Thing - Have Love Will Travel (mp3)
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