Thunder

Please Remain Seated BMG

Thunder stripped back and laid bare.

Twenty-eight years ago, I sat on Thunder’s tour bus outside the Paradiso in Amsterdam. It was late, and even while some girls tried to pull him away, guitarist Luke Morley wanted to play me a new song he’d written for their second album. Moments like these aren’t rare, and I was ready to run rather than listen to half a musical idea bolstered by a muddy mix. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The keening demo version of Low Life In High Places was a beautiful sketch of a song, filled with promise and life. So much so that the finished version never sounded quite as good to me when parent album Laughing On Judgement Day finally arrived.

That song reappears on Please Remain Seated, this time pianoled before it turns into a mournful elegy buoyed by a male voice choir; it is, remarkably, the unexpected left that feels right. This collection of reworked songs from the Thunder catalogue mostly eschews the straight acoustic cover for gentle swing, blues and the occasional jazz note, from a band live in the studio, reflecting on a remarkable musical life well lived.