Thomas Giles – ‘Velcro Kid’ [Review]
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Thomas Giles has a pretty cool day job. As Tommy Rogers, he fronts American prog metal outfit Between The Buried And Me, adding idiosyncratic touches to albums like Colors and Coma Ecliptic. During downtime, Thomas Giles emerges with fresh music that is itself unique and compelling.
Velcro Kid begins with Immersion Highway – a song that sounds like a Muse remix until Thomas Giles’ vocal enters. From that point on there’s no doubt as to who you’re listening to, although there’s more than a hint of Kraftwerk, David Bowie, and Pink Floyd floating around in there too. As you’d expect from someone located on the cutting edge of progressive music, Thomas Giles merges his influences seamlessly, the results sounding like evolution rather than derivation.
For listeners accustomed to Between The Buried And Me’s hyperkinetic onslaught, Velcro Kid will be full of surprises. Devin Townsend guests on Gazer, a slice of beautifully orchestrated anxiety-ridden borderline-trip-hop – but for me, Velcro Kid’s most unexpected song proved a personal highlight. There’s a fair amount of modern poptronica scattered throughout Velcro Kid, but Devotion (featuring Jake Troth) could almost be a Take That track.
Devotion’s core lyric (“I know it’s not my style / But I believe in this”) says it all, encapsulating exceptional self-awareness and a steadfast refusal to conform even to the standards of the music world’s most out-there nonconformists. Going a little deeper, it highlights the fact that the pressure to conform can exist even in the most unusual places – like the Goth kids in South Park insisting “You can’t be a nonconformist if you don’t drink coffee” – and prog fans can sometimes be as guilty as mainstreamers when it comes to applying said pressure. Of course, musicians bear the weight of that pressure more than anyone else in the prog scene, making Devotion a key example of an artist sticking to his guns and emerging victorious as a result.
Ultimately, with Velcro Kid Thomas Giles has once again proven himself as a solo artist with something valuable to say. This is not some smorgasbord of ego-wanking indulgences; it’s an immense, luxurious album that is what all great pop music is. Not gaudy, tacky, throwaway entertainment, but subversive, immersive, and intelligent.
TMMP RATING: 94% (Essential Listening!)
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