Thunder Boys slip through a Leak In The Dreamworld in their terrifically trippy new album — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
The back story: A broken city, a decimated relationship, agonizing illness, loss of hope. In the heart of the pandemic in 2020, four Bay Area musicians came together to form Thunder Boys and record an album amidst a period of intense darkness. What unfolded is Leak In The Dreamworld, an ecstatic journey through the wreckage, a vessel that grew not out of obligation, but unfettered necessity. In some ways, the record birthed itself: The brainchild of Tyson Vogel, Brandon Chester, Aaron Diko and Justin Flowers, who found themselves drawn together to form a special connection through hardship and the inexplicable drive to create. The group recorded Leak In The Dreamworld between the six rooms in Vogel’s parent’s home in Sonoma, CA, an environment that would offer them the space and freedom for their creative chemistry to thrive.
“There’s a special process that felt like it wasn’t in our control, and in a lot of ways, none of it was. The only control we had was with each other, in this house. The world around us was in chaos.” Says principle songwriter Vogel, who, like the rest of the band, grappled with his own personal struggles in tandem with those of the world. At the start of the pandemic, he was afflicted with a case of shingles that would render him immobile and in pain for months, a period that coincided with the dissolution of an important partnership he had at the time.
Leak In The Dreamworld rises from the loins of this suffering. The record’s opening track blooms like the aftermath of an apocalypse: A slow-building synth that gives way to a force of guitars, drums, and Vogel’s powerful vocals which carry the music into lucid, atmospheric punk-rock.
Leak In The Dreamworld doesn’t stay in any one sonic place for too long, and therein lies the beauty of it: Thunder Boys have no blueprint. The music careens onwards, propelled purely by the intuition and finesse that each member brings to the sound. From the heavy-rock epic of Conduit To The Deceased, to the instrumental, acoustic Tiger Tooth In My Growl, to the almost orchestral-psychedelic-country closer Fist To The Sky, Leak In The Dreamworld is a fearless, spiritual odyssey through catastrophe. Together, Thunder Boys find beauty, gratitude, and survival.
Though the majority of the songs on Leak In The Dreamworld were penned by Vogel, the record is far from strictly a singer-songwriter venture. Vogel’s lyrics come alive in the collaboration with his bandmates. “Each one of them is so sensitive and special.” Vogel says. “You can feel it. I just really believe in the beauty and spontaneity of collaboration between people who are all connected — you all become one idea. I wouldn’t be able to do any of this without them” After the recording process, Vogel took the album to producer and long-time mentor Karl Derfler, who expanded Leak In The Dreamworld into its final form.
Derfler had also worked with Vogel on his past project Two Gallants. That band, started modestly within the confines of Vogel’s parents’ laundry room in 2002, embarked on an odyssey across America, navigating five self-booked national tours. Their journey was sustained by self-recorded, self-burned CDRs and the support of individuals deeply moved by their craft, offering both humbling devotion and the occasional roof over the band members’ heads.
Collaborations with renowned labels such as Alive Records, Saddle Creek Records and ATO Records followed, yielding five full-length albums, alongside a trove of singles and EPs. A hiatus eventually beckoned in early 2016, casting a shadow over the band’s trajectory. Vogel’s journey, however, was far from over.
He set himself on a new path of creativity and expression amidst a city, society, country and world going through their own transformations and evolutions of cultural zeitgeists. Navigating the tumultuous seas of personal growth against the backdrop of this societal transformation, this journey continues to resonate with a raw, unfiltered authenticity that defies categorization. Thunder Boys’ songs echo trial and tribulation; hope, destruction and love — it’s a wrestling with a past and an investment into a vision of the future that is connected, vulnerable, elevated, naturalist, animalistic, spiritual and human.
Listen to Leak In The Dreamworld below, watch the video for Sorry Jars & Shooting Stars above, and join Thunder Boys on their website and Instagram.
