Thursday: Kill The House Lights (CD)

As evidenced by the recent auction of Picasso's handwritten notes and doodles featuring such gems as "I'm in the restaurant", (for over £1,000) people will buy anything if it's by someone they admire.

This is a fact which "Kill The House Lights" is banking on, it seems that no one along the way considered 'why' most of these songs were unreleased. The CD portion of the package features twelve tracks, of which, only three could be considered fully fledged unreleased songs.

Those aforementioned songs are the very first three tracks, "Ladies and Gentlemen - My Brother, the Failure", "Dead Songs" and "Voices on a String". The trio comprise woefully mundane songs which were obviously discarded for very good reason. Devoid of any of the spark or innovation which populated the bands studio albums, the only highlight of these efforts would be the mid-section of "...My Brother..." which segues into a rather lush breakdown which perfectly frames the rest of the song.

What about the rest of the tracks then? "Panic on the Streets of Health Care City" and "Music from Kill The House Lights" are both well crafted, yet criminally short instrumental mood pieces. "The Roar of Far Off Black Jets" is a one minute introduction proceeded by the "Full Collapse" version of "How Long Is The Night?". "A Sketch for Time's Arrow" while featuring some new material, was mostly recycled for the song "The Other Side of the Crash" from their most recent album "A City By The Light Divided".

After that, all your left with is various live, demo and alternate versions of songs already released. "Kill The House Lights" is likely to elicit the response of "Where's that eject button?" from newcomers to Thursday, and "Huh" from Thursday aficionados, followed by the CD being forevermore used as a dust magnet.

The bands aplomb at writing serene mood pieces is well illustrated by this CD, infinitely more interesting would of been the prospect of the band expanding upon this and providing a unique counterpart to the DVD. As it is though, the only purpose to this audio sidekick seems to be to make sure "Kill The House Lights" gets into all of the music shops as well as the DVD shops. Which as you may know, equals more sales, and more money.