Late in January, Ypsilanti-based songwriter Fred Thomas – best known as the leader of the lo-fi indie pop group Saturday Looks Good to Me – released “Bad Blood.” Dirty laundry, the airing of grievances, a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves – in Fred Thomas’ hands these grand statements of self-reproach and repentance turn sour and rancid, as his words betray an all-too-familiar inability to move on, no matter how much we may think we have. “Bad Blood” stains are everywhere.
Although he possesses a sense of self-awareness (“I know it’s disgusting how much I think about myself in relation to nothing”), Thomas also feels helpless before the weight of the past. Musically, an organ swallows him whole. Synths smear his spoken word monologue while drums pound furiously against him tooth and nail, leaving Thomas battered and bruised – not that he even cares, for what is this song but a catharsis? For one thing, it’s also an indictment – “It’s that song that everybody loves, but the lyrics are garbage/ And it stresses me out how often you’re mentioned.” Who is this unnamed figure that Thomas passes on the street, who triggers this stream of consciousness? The answer is secondary to the question, as it always is.
“Bad Blood” comprises just one of the tracks off All Are Saved, a record that is heartbreaking in its poignancy, knee buckling in its humor, and head-scratching in its uncertainties. Thomas does not hold our hands: anyone looking for easy listening or sonic wallpaper would be well-advised to look elsewhere, but those seeking an eccentric singer-songwriter baring his soul should find much to love here. The songs sound inspirational, so you might picture a dreamer; the album features twee pop instrumentation, so you might picture an earnest schoolboy or a bookish collegiate type pining for another time, be it his childhood or a half-remembered past. These are all images that lose their potency, however, as the artist makes his revelations, song by song – we slowly start to see a person who might just be like us, capable of both a boundless love for his dog and hatred for that unidentified figure. Fred Thomas as human.
That’s the major takeaway we get from All Are Saved, with “Bad Blood” boiling down that mission statement to its essentials. Thomas feels most relatable when he’s at his most bitter, when he drops any affectations and speaks directly from experience – a LiveJournal come to actual life, warts and all, that is embarrassing precisely because it’s real. He drops a line about kids kissing on a bridge into a song about wanton police brutality (“Cops Don’t Care Pt. II”), remembers drunkenly destroying his flip-phone in some alley in Baltimore while eulogizing his deceased puppy (“Every Song Sung to a Dog”), and realizes he “can’t tell everybody to fuck off forever.” (“Bedbugs”) Well, you very well could, but you can’t “be mortified when they finally do.” There’s reason to believe that Thomas knows all about this firsthand.
Words come first for Thomas. The music on All Are Saved often runs counter to the subject matter, heightening the lyrical tension of the songs and emphasizing the highly fraught nature of Fred Thomas’ excruciatingly maintained (or likely not) relationships. Many tracks recall The Wrens or Pavement in their sprawling, shifting structure; All Are Saved even slots readily next to Fleet Foxes, though it leans more heavily on the unvarnished truth than it does dewy-eyed, earthy harmonies and sunny Americana. But what unites Thomas with his contemporaries is a proclivity for poetry: He just shows it in ways more akin to Charles Bukowski than Robert Frost.
All Are Saved renders ambiguity and confusion in sonic form. Thomas may be witty, but his jokes are indiscriminate bombs that deal a considerable amount of collateral damage, most of all to himself, as if he always holds on to the grenade too long after pulling the pin. The first track finds him speculating that his “eight potential decades” of life would be “sloppy, selfish, and unreal,” which sets the tone for the rest of the record, an aural tome on regrets. It’s album as memento mori, with Fred Thomas running through his life in song and reminding us of its transient nature. Yet, for all that, he still sings, “Life is so incredibly long.”
Ultimately though, Fred Thomas’ candor pays more dividends than his banter. All Are Saved’s final two vocal tracks show this– “Expo ‘87” and “Doggie” – the former a coarse tirade against, well, everything, and the latter yet another moving tribute to the pet eulogized in the first track. It’s a study in contrasts: cynic vs. sycophant, “Give up, fuck up, stay out” vs. “New days, please be good to us.” In the end, what “wins” is of relatively little importance, as one person can hold both ideals simultaneously, and after all, it was never about the answer. Still, it’s telling that Thomas’ last words are “I love you.”
Stream All Are Saved below: