In uncertain times, Thus Love are embracing the pleasure principle

Rumour has it that deep in the ground beneath Brattleboro is a crystal emitting a strange psychic energy. It’s also in this otherwise unassuming Vermont town that the Connecticut and West Rivers meet, a point of great significance to the indigenous Abenaki people and one marked by 3,000-year-old petroglyphs. Meanwhile, those who subscribe to the esoteric idea that ley lines can be drawn between significant sites across the globe believe that one of them runs right through the town centre.

Whatever its source, there is a special energy that runs through this small New England town, one that seeps deep into the souls of its residents. For a settlement of 12,000 people, Brattleboro’s arts scene is teeming with creativity. Take The Buoyant Heart, for instance, a 100-year-old former factory that a community of local musicians, artists and outsiders have commandeered as a makeshift studio, hang-out, independent venue and rehearsal space. Or equally, the local Thai restaurant, where boss Peera Voravittayathorn was once a world-renowned touring drummer.

“Vermont used to be a temperate rainforest, so it has this very lush but intensely fluctuating environment,” offers Echo Mars, vocalist and guitarist in Thus Love, when asked for their theory on Brattleboro’s unique energy. “I think that imbues itself into the community. Things happen intensely and quickly here, and in strange ways.”

Even by Brattleboro standards, Thus Love are something special. They emerged from the febrile Buoyant Heart scene, with all three members living in the same one-bedroom apartment, designing their own merchandise and constructing a makeshift recording studio. It was there that they recorded their slinky, hook-packed debut album, 2022’s ‘Memorial’, which catapulted them from small-town Vermont to the world. Putting their queerness at the centre of their work – Mars, drummer Lu Racine and founding bassist Nathaniel van Osdol all identify as trans – the ties they forged with their audience ran deep.

The international tours that followed amid critical acclaim – including a host of shows in the UK, where they were particularly embraced, including support duties for Dry Cleaning and sold-out headline gigs at iconic venues from The 100 Club to the Brudenell – came at a cost, however, with van Osdol departing on amicable terms the following year.

“Living, breathing, existing in America is extremely political” – Lu Racine

“They kept things inside for a really long time because they wanted to support everything that was happening, but it just got to a point where they were just so over it, so tired,” says Racine, joining all four of Thus Love on a Zoom call from Vermont. He specifies, however, that they’re still “very close” with their old bandmate, adding: “We were just at their birthday party a couple of weekends ago.”

Mars and Racine were weary too – “When you become a musician, you realise why musicians are assholes,” jokes Mars – but remain committed to the band. “For me, this is my only outlet, my only tether to a reality that makes sense,” says Mars, “so despite those hardships, it made sense for me and Lu to keep going. We’re glad we found people who felt the same way.”

One of them was Ally Juleen, who, as luck – or as she describes it, “something kind of cosmic” – would have it, had just become yet another artist drawn to this particular town. “Someone I was dating was living up here, and my best friend needed a roommate,” she says. “So I was like, ‘I’m just gonna move to Vermont, why not?’” Having moved from New York, the relocation was jarring at first, she admits. “I was feeling a little lost. But then these guys swooped in, and suddenly, the doors opened to my next step in life.”

Then came another jarring transition – her first gigs as Thus Love’s new bassist took them all the way to Brazil. Then, when it emerged that they were looking to shore up their sound by expanding into a four-piece, she invited Shane Blank – an old bandmate from the Boston band Bat House – to make the move from Seattle. Blank and his fiancé are now long-distance. He’s sleeping on Juleen’s couch and working as a fry cook at that aforementioned Thai restaurant, but says resolutely that “when I got this opportunity, I knew that it had to happen”.

Even for long-time members Mars and Racine, life in Thus Love is defined by a similar contrast between extremes. On the one hand, the hype that came with ‘Memorial’ injected their shows with a sense of intense energy. By outstripping expectations every night, they soon amassed a fanbase with the kind of dedication that most could only dream of. On the other, when the shows were over, they’d return to sleepy Vermont, where life as artists committed to a self-sustaining ethos was altogether less glamorous.

“You have to find joy and pleasure to keep your head above the water if you want to keep being a band in this capacity” – Ally Juleen

“The DIY shit is pretty necessary, spiritually speaking,” says Mars. But on the other hand, they point out that “we’ve been broke as hell our whole lives. We can go to London and we can sell out a show. It’s awesome to be a rock star, but then you go home and you’re like, ‘Shit, I’ve gotta find a new day job, I’ve got to wash dishes for $15 an hour.”

Mars also says they have felt “major imposter syndrome” along the way. “People will have a fantasy about who you are and what your art means to them, which is great – that is supposed to happen – but it’s a big shift from being a regular ass person in a tiny Vermont town,” they explain.

It begs the question – why stay? “Oftentimes we’re asked, ‘Are you planning on moving to New York?’” says Mars, a little wearily. “But it’s not really an option right now, based on the amount of sacrifices we’ve made for the band to be in any kind of financially viable situation. Like, we can’t pay that much more rent.” It’s also, they continue, symptomatic of a larger issue with late-stage capitalism. “The divide between the elite and the proletariat is becoming more and more polarised. It’s all these major acts that are getting all the money.”

“There’s a community here who want to help,” adds Juleen. “We rehearse in the basement of a print shop where Echo works, and we can print all of our own merch. If we wanted to do that in Brooklyn, it would be way too expensive.”

In such an unsettled context, and recorded over the length of the band’s expansion in membership, it feels telling that the title of their new album is ‘All Pleasure’. When recording in their makeshift studio – a woodland barn they call the Hobbit Hole – they established a ground rule that if something wasn’t joyful, it wasn’t worth doing. ‘All Pleasure’ became not just a title but a mantra.

“When Echo told me the name they wanted for the album, I absolutely loved it because that’s how it feels to hang out with you guys,” says Juleen, addressing their bandmates directly. “It’s a nice reminder for me personally that you have to find joy and pleasure to keep your head above the water if you want to keep being a band in this capacity.”

“It’s awesome to be a rock star, but then you go home and you’re like, ‘Shit, I’ve gotta find a new day job’” – Echo Mars

With Blank getting to know Mars and Racine in real time (he was recording less than a month after moving to Brattleboro), they embraced that “sweet and awkward” energy of establishing their relationship. “Shane would be like, ‘Can I use your bathroom?’, or ‘Are you guys also hungry?’, then rip a guitar solo and be like, ‘How do you feel about that?’” laughs Mars.

“The record forged our relationship,” says Blank. For him, it’s an album about “a reclaiming of pleasure. So much of our lives are spent worrying that it feels like we’ve lost our sense of joy.”

With that said, the band remain politically outspoken. Racine is particularly keen to point out that it’s been just over a year since the beginning of Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Amid this ongoing atrocity, they believe that it’s “important to do something” with what platform they have. “I think any artist shouldn’t be afraid of the consequences if they know what is morally correct,” they say. “It’s been a very violent year, and in the media, I think there’s been a very underrepresented side of the story, and that has been that there is an active genocide happening. There are thousands of kids dying in the worst way possible, and that’s being backed by our tax dollars.”

We’re also speaking a few days ahead of the American presidential election, where LGBTQ+ and women’s rights have been put very much on the line after Donald Trump’s eventual victory. “I’m trans, so just having a body is political,” Racine continues. “Living, breathing, existing in this country is extremely political.”

Although it might first appear that making a record about pleasure is incongruous given how vocal they continue to be about political issues, as Juleen points out, the truth is anything but. “As queer people, or for me as a woman, we’ve always existed under a spotlight, with our identities always being talked about in politics. So it’s kind of like, whatever! Fuck everybody else, we can talk about whatever we want. We’re also in a rock band!”

The joy of interaction that this record captures, then, is an act of resistance – a means of self-preservation at a time when their lives – whether as queer people or as DIY musicians – are getting harder and harder to maintain. Perhaps, then, it’s best viewed as a tribute to the deeper force that remains constant through the ups and downs of independent, queer musicianship. And perhaps that force is the same as whatever’s coursing through Brattleboro.

“It all comes down to electromagnetism,” says Mars. “The cosmic functions that manipulate guitar sounds and make an amplifier work and make copper conduct frequencies [of] the vibrations of strings is the exact same force that interconnects human beings.”

Thus Love’s ‘All Pleasure’ is out now via Captured Tracks

Listen to Thus Love’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover on Spotify below or here on Apple Music

Words: Patrick Clarke
Photography: Marisa Bazan
Location: Green Lung Studio
Label: Captured Tracks

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