Fred Thomas: Flood

Indie geeks may recognize him from the Michigan pop group Saturday Looks Good to Me, but fans of more bittersweet four-track folk could do worse than explore Flood, the newest of many Fred Thomas (note: not Thompson) solo efforts. On lovely acoustic tracks like “Snow Bright”, Thomas weaves undeniably gorgeous melodies with rustling lo-fi effects. Meanwhile, the title track is a haunting seven-minute track with a chaotic conclusion, as if an attempt to put the ‘freak’ back in ‘freak-folk’. Thomas takes this to an extreme on “There Was a Flood”, a song buried beneath layers of red-zone fuzz. The album’s centerpiece, however, is “Little Songs”, at turns noisy and affecting. The result is unsettling, yet endearing and not entirely dissimilar from that of Sparklehorse’s early work: move past the cryptic interludes and “Is it supposed to sound like that?” effect and you’ll find some rewarding songwriting.