Thinker
Album: Time To Run
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.thinkermusic.co.uk

"Time To Run" is the much anticipated follow up to the band's well received debut cut, "Call To Arms", an album that showed Thinker as not just a band delivering on the live and festival circuit, but also able to deliver in the studio.

As with the debut album, Thinker's approach has been to test and refine a number of the original songs on the live circuit and then mix them with some brand new songs, ensuring that there's something here for everyone, including a rather unexpected cover of the traditional song "Tell My Ma" used almost as an encore.

The album has a real uptempo rock feel running through it, with folky undertones being delivered by key fiddle lines supporting the guitar orientated lead. Underneath that is a cleverly constructed rhythm adding a real sense of drive, at times almost urgently. That said Thinker know enough about overloading the senses to know that there need to be the slower passages to give people a chance to get their breath and not feel they are caught in a musical rat race.

The band are also prepared to take more of a chance lyrically. "Time To Run" is a more political record than it's predecessor. The band have got things that they want to get off their chest and this is an opportunity for them to do so and do so rather well. It also forms a nice juxtaposition with some of the harmonies, taking the message at a tangent to the sound.

It means that you can listen to the album in different ways depending on your mood. Should you wish, you can let the music flow, let your fingers and toes get tapping or make that little bit of extra effort to get more out of the recording.

"Time To Run" definitely shows that Thinker are not a band to standstill and rest on their laurels, they are a band that are on a journey and this is an album that's going to take them a substantial chunk along the way.

Neil King