Hutch Harris At Home - Early Recordings of Hutch and Kathy of the Thermals

With all the stink made over Karen O's leaked demos, I'm glad we get to see some of our other favorite bands' early works. That is, assuming they don't outright suck. This episode brings us Hutch and Kathy -the broccoli and cheese of the Thermals- and their early formation as Urban Legends. I had a 7" I picked up over the summer that got me googling around this evening and found that Contraphonic is re-releasing a collection of those earlier demos and recordings on January 23rd titled Of Old Lost Days. If you can't wait for it to arrive in stores -or doubt your local Best Buy stocks early recording re-releases- then you can order it online right now.

Urban Legends- The World Is Strange [mp3]

CMJ blog writes:

[I]ts lo-fi tracks mostly prove that, while Harris was always a promising songwriter, he really blossomed into a superstar only in the last few years. That, of course, hasn’t stopped me from replaying the rough yet catchy little ditties ad naseum —I’m waiting for one of my coworkers to complain.

Following Urban Legends, Hutch and Kathy formed a third band called -ummm- Hutch and Kathy. Chronologically speaking that would also be their third band as a pairing since they were also once in a band called haelah.

If this wasn't a "lost" Thermals song I'd SWEAR this was a lost Mountain Goats tune:

Hutch & Kathy - An Infinite Loop [mp3]

It's almost like an early, folkier version of the their More Parts Per Million song "Born Dead."

As far as new material goes, Kathy writes that they are "working on new songs in January and February before leaving for tour."