FRED THOMAS - Aftering LP

Fred Thomas had been making music nonstop for years when a seismic shift in his creative process happened in 2013. Something mystical opened up in the fall of that year and the prolific songwriter moved from his already emotionally open style into an unprecedentedly direct and vulnerable lyrical approach as well as new levels of detail-fixated production. The songs took on a new urgency, inspired by a feeling that life was beginning afresh while at the same time a lifetime of experiences were cementing into worlds of memory. The results of that creatively eruptive time began with 2015's critically hailed album All Are Saved, continued into the turbulent pop of 2017’s Changer and now float into Aftering, a record that feels like the final chapter of an unofficial trilogy.

Just as the two before it, Aftering was produced, mixed and assembled on location in a close collaboration between Thomas and Athens, Georgia based engineer Drew Vandenberg. All cut from the same cloth, Aftering ties the knots that connect all three records. Where both All Are Saved and Changer flitted nervously between moments of jangly powerpop, electronic interludes and experimental acoustic weirdness, Aftering maps out a far more intentional arc, burning through a first act of speedy, hook-heavy guitar rock before taking a sharp, brutal dive into an abyss on the album’s second half.