Hidden Treasures - The Thorns

Every once in a while I think about the hidden treasures in my collection, albums that I really enjoy but that didn't seem to catch on like I had thought (or hoped) they would or should, The Thorns - released in 2003 is one such album.

The Thorns are a trio made up of Matthew Sweet, Shawn Mullins and Pete Droge, all folks I like and who have had their share of solo success. Apparently, they connected during some downtime and had the very Crosby, Stills & Nash like moment of realizing that their particular voices made harmony magic when combined. In fact, the CSN comparison comes up a lot in the reviews like this one from Allmusic .

The harmonies are fabulous indeed. The songs are all catchy, well crafted pop tunes and the whole album has a really great classic vibe to it. A cover of the Jayhawks Blue shows things off quite well.

Sadly, only one album was released along with a brief tour. The album is still generally available but I recommend you take the extra effort to look around and find the enhanced version with the all acoustic bonus disc, it's well worth it.

A couple of miscellaneous notes:

What does Jim Keltner have to do to get to be an official member of one of these collaborations? He provided drums for this release as well as the much higher profile Travelling Wilbury's releases. At least John Hiatt, Ry Cooder and Nick Lowe let him into Little Village.

Matthew Sweet's web site is apparently run on Joomla. He really needs to have his web folks create a custom favicon rather than it defaulting to the standard Joomla one.

Shawn Mullins has a home page titled ShawnWebTemp. I thought that was amusing. He points to a myspace page which I refuse to visit.

Pete Droge has a very cool flash based site - nice work by this by them and worth a visit.

SB

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One of my most-played records of 2003! Loved the harmonies! I liked each one of these guys before they came together, so it was a real treat to hear the magic they made. Good pick for a hidden treasure!

#1 nat (Homepage) on 2008-08-19 10:24 (Reply)

Thanks - it's a favorite of mine as well and seemed like a perfect hidden treasure. I'm working on identifying some others - there are no shortage of them in my collection.

Gina and I bought this for my brother and I don't think he has ever listened to it.

SB

#1.1 Scott (Homepage) on 2008-08-19 13:27 (Reply)

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