Thunder back in the West Midlands with a new tour and new surprise sound

Their new record, Dopamine, is an absolute classic. It’s also not the sort of record you might have expected from a band whose rock roots were so elegantly demonstrated on their preceding release, the number two hit All The Right Noises.

Thunder are about to burst back on to the stage in West Midlands. With their new release, Thunder have thrown a curve ball. Yes, there are foot-stomping, lung-busting, foot-to-the-floor rock outs of the variety that they do better than anyone else. But then there’s keyboards – yes, keyboards – as well as backing singers who at times make principal songwriter Luke Morley sound as though he’s had a great night out in the Motown vault. Dopamine rocks, make no mistake about that, but it also has hidden depths that reveal themselves with repeated plays. It’s the sound of a band with huge confidence, with the experience to follow their instinct and with the talent to move in different directions.

In normal times, a new record wouldn’t be expected so soon after All The Right Noises. But these remain far from ‘normal’. We’re still recovering from the pandemic, a time when bands weren’t allowed to play live but were able to get creative by writing new tunes – as Morley did.

Frontman Danny Bowes says the band didn’t set out to make a new record. Yet with no touring on the horizon they found themselves with time on their hands in the summer of 2021 and wanted to put that to good use. So, within two months of releasing All The Right Noises, they were back in the studio. The songs were diverse and eclectic and for a while they considered deleting those that didn’t fit in to what fans might expect of a Thunder record.

“We were having trouble trying to decide what to leave off because some of the more diverse songs were elbowing themselves to the front of the queue. So rather than make ourselves suffer by deleting some, it probably felt more natural to cull it from 20 to 16 and call it a double album. We didn’t set out to make a double record. It’s just the way things happened.”

The quality of Dopamine ought not to be a surprise. Yet., for some reason, it is. Having ascended so many highs, Thunder are unwilling to rest of their laurels and trot out greatest hits. They remain relevant, dynamic and keen to push the boundaries. The march of time also means they feel a greater sense of urgency to put out new masterworks, to nail things while they can.

“We’re well aware of the fact that we have more years behind us than we do in front. We don’t know how many records well make. We’ve had a few scares with Ben and with Harry. Without wishing to get maudlin and miserable, we are intensely practical people. If anything went wrong, we’d have to make a tough decision as to whether to carry on and that would mean we’d already recorded our last album. It’s a different mindset to when you’re young and you have plenty of time.

“There’s been a subtle shift I the way we think about our music these days. We’ve employed different musicians and singers and they’ve all brought something to it. That’s given us the ability to stretch the music.

“We’ve got keyboards and that enables us to do a little bit more. We can all sing and play but it makes a massive difference when you add in those flavours. We’ve had 30-years plus of making records. We’ve got an audience that’s incredibly loyal and gives us a licence to make music that’s good and they us licence to do something different.”

Please Remain Seated hinted at the band’s ability to go in different directions. That record, released in 2019, was well received as the band trod an acoustic, lo-fi path, leaving to one side the Harley Davidson-esque rock bombast that they’re capable of.

“Prior to Please Remain Seated, people had asked us for an acoustic version of Love Walked In. They wanted it for weddings but they were worried about blowing granny’s hair off if they played the rock version. It’s a power ballad and we thought about that for years and years and years. We got to the point after the Wonder Days album that luke was nagging us to do the Christmas song, Christmas Day. I suggested to Luke we do a different gentler version of Love Walked In on the flipside. That was a penny drop moment, because it was fun. So, later, we went onto Please Remain Seated, which was very experimental and free form. We just chucked a load of songs around and came up with versions we liked. Having done it that, we released what we were capable of and that, to cut a long story short, is why we had the confidence for a project like Dopamine.

“The rock sensibility of All The Right Noises is still there but it’s also got the diversity of Please Remain Seated.”

Which brings us to the shows. Thunder headline Birmingham’s Resorts World Arena on May 27 – finally getting to play shows much-delayed by Covid. They have a huge fan base in the non-more-metal region that is the West Midlands and they’re looking forward to those shows.

“This bunch of shows that we’re going to do in may have been a long time coming – we announced them in 2019, they moved to 2020, then to 2021 and now they are here. They feel to me like an itch that I’ve had for more than two years that I need to scratch. The fact these are first proper shows in front of a big audience since early 2019 – which were for please remain seated, so a very different show – it’s impossible to over-state how excited we are about these shows. To get back out there on a big stage and strut our stuff is great. We are very, very, very much looking forward to it. It will be enormous. It is beyond the beyond.”

Dopamine is out now. Tickets for Thunder’s show at Birmingham are available at thunderonline.com