The Thrills' debut album So Much For The City turned 20 at the end of June.
It’s hard to believe, but the facts don’t lie, it was released on June 30th of 2003.
The album features the popular singles One Horse Town, Santa Cruz (You’re Not That Far), Don’t Steal Our Sun and Big Sur. The success of these songs would help the album go Top 10 in both Ireland and the UK. With this came international acclaim, which saw the band catapulted from local favourites to a band touring the globe for the next number of years.
The Story of The Thrills So Much For The City is a 60-minute deep dive into how the album came to be. It features interviews with guitarist Daniel Ryan and vocalist Conor Deasy, band manager Alan Cullivan, 2fm’s Tracy Clifford, along with Shell Dooley and Aoife Hester of Montauk Hotel; one of Ireland’s current generation of band’s that have been inspired by the album. Listen above...
The Thrills and JJ72 (a couple of years earlier) were the first Irish guitar bands to score significant success outside of Ireland since The Cranberries almost a decade earlier. The list of artists that had near misses in the intervening years makes interesting reading (not to mention listening).
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
Watch, via RTÉ Archives: The Thrills nominated for Mercury Music Prize in 2003
While The Thrills would follow-up So Much For The City a year later with Let's Bottle Bohemia, and 2007’s hugely underrated album Teenager, it’s the debut that many view as the pinnacle of their artistic achievements. Recorded between October 2002 and March 2003, So Much For The City captures something very special; a youthful energy in the form of glorious pop tunes that have aged extremely well over the past two decades.
Dan Hegarty hosts The Alternative on RTÉ 2FM, Mon-Thu @ 11pm - listen back here
