Ypsilanti, Michigan-based musician Fred Thomas is probably best known for the Motown-tinged pop of Saturday Looks Good to Me, but he has worked on countless projects spanning genres since the 1990s.
His latest release, Window in the Rhythm, is one of his boldest and most ambitious projects to date, examining the past as a way of moving forward. It also happens to be one of his very best, a crowning achievement in a career filled with an enviable number of excellent releases. What sets this apart from so many other reflective records is how Thomas looks at how our memories of people and events change, how we sometimes crave the memory over a renewed connection, and the acknowledgment that this cycle will continue as we pass through this life.
“I had a very concrete intention for this to be different from the previous three records I put out on Polyvinyl,” Fred Thomas notes to PopMatters. “I wrote these songs while I was in solitude. I was home by myself while my partner was away. I had the time to think about who I was and what I needed from the past to move forward.”
As was the case for so many of us, the forced reflection time of lockdown was a factor. “It’s impossible to omit the influence of the pandemic. I had time to take an inventory. There are people from my life with whom I’d been having conversations in my head. I miss the memory more than what is happening today.”
On paper, Window in the Rhythm is a big swing, especially in this era of ever-shortening attention spans. It has seven tracks across two LPs, a run time of an hour, and some songs that cross the ten-minute mark. It might not work for some of his dedicated listeners, but Thomas knew what he had to do and did it.
“Attention spans are so short now. Records need a story to stand out from the rest of what is out there. There is a context to this record that I have tried to share and obfuscate in equal parts. If I explained what the songs mean to me, it would become tedious. There is a deep intentionality in this record for me. Some of these are memories from when I was around 24; I’m now twice as old. Some of the memories are mundane, like not getting feelings returned by a crush to things that are more intense, like a friend of mine and his family dying in an accident,” Thomas said.
He also tried to challenge himself as a songwriter. “With this record, every time I had an impulse to lean into my influences, I decided to try to make something that felt less safe to me. I love the song that’s two minutes long and is so good you want to listen to it again and again. So, I tried to take some lessons from writing those songs and apply them to these longer songs. I am not sure how some longtime listeners will react to them,” he notes.
He needn’t worry. Even though the subject matter can be heavy, and some songs are over ten minutes, Window in the Rhythm‘s seven tracks fly by. From the opening track, it is clear that Fred Thomas has crafted something special, a record destined to be replayed every fall. You can practically feel the chill in the air coming through the speakers from the opening track. Over the next hour, the insights and evocations will likely make you reflect on your own time on this planet and how your memories evolve as you get further away from the original experiences.
Thomas also aimed to stretch his lyric writing. “The record is all about memories and using them as a way to accept the present. I knew that If I wanted to express how those memories made me feel, I would have to dive deep into them. I aimed to make the feelings and sounds go hand in hand, and I thought for a long time about how to do that,” he said.
At this point, Thomas is accustomed to people in his life reacting to his lyrics. Thomas is perpetually amused by the feedback he gets. “Most of the people in my songs could text me and ask about them. I’m not that famous. Every time I put out a record, I have to have some extinguishing conversations with people who think things are about them, but they aren’t. They’re always wrong,” he laughed.
While Thomas did most of the heavy lifting for Window in the Rhythm, he brought a small group of talented friends to help him. “I gave the songs to people and said, ‘Put drums on this. Sing on it. I want you to be represented.’ I didn’t provide direction. In the past, I’ve played everything on the project. I can keep time, but I’m not a drummer. Even if you can do it all, maybe you shouldn’t,” he laughed.
Fred Thomas is frequently blown away by the talent of younger musicians he has worked with. “People born after 2000, so many of them are staggeringly talented. I was eating pizza and crying at their age. It’s like, ‘How did you get so good?’” he laughed.
“I am so fascinated by people making incredible music. I always feel like I’m constantly reaching for that but not quite getting there. I heard the Microphones‘ The Glow Pt. 2 when it came out, and I have been trying to make my own version ever since,” he explained.
Thomas is following his own muse at this stage of his life as a musician. It has always been like this, though, as fans of his work know well. One of the rewards of being a Fred Thomas fan is anticipating where he will turn up next. He even put out a drum and bass record last year.
“I have a friend who does noise stuff, and Marshall Allen from Sun Ra Arkestra told him, ‘Play everything.’ He is nearly 100 years old and still improvising. I won’t contest his advice,” Thomas noted. However, quality control is necessary. “I grew up hanging out with Andrew WK. In pre-internet times, we made rap songs under the name Coffinz. It was gothic rap. But until both of us die, no one will hear it,” he laughed.
He has embraced the joy of creating for so long that dreams of making it big in the traditional sense aren’t even on his mind. “I don’t think I’ll do something that suddenly everyone will hear. One Saturday Looks Good to Me song passed a million streams on Spotify recently, and that was really unexpected to me. I wondered what glitch pushed it into people’s algorithms,” he laughed. “I have given up on the idea that I will impress my heroes, that I make a song that is so undeniably good that people want to support it. But even after giving all that up, I still want to do it.”
Fred Thomas continued, “There is a moment in the Arthur Russell documentary where his partner and family are going through his apartment, and the filmmakers ask what would have happened if Arthur was still alive. His parents said there would probably have been more tapes.”
“I could imagine not doing music professionally. I have toured a lot in 2024, as much as I did about 20 years ago. It was some of the most gratifying touring I’ve done, but I don’t know if I need to keep doing that, even though it was fun. I can imagine a world where I bubble up every couple of years to share what I’ve been up to,” he said. “Many of my projects are transitory. I will do a week with Winged Wheel soon. Idle Ray has been making a record, and when it’s out, we will probably do some shows.”
As someone known for appearing on many different projects, Thomas has a short list of dream collaborators. “I have met people whose music shaped my life, and I was really disappointed in meeting some of my heroes. But I would work with Will Oldham without hesitation,” he said.
Thomas described a memorable encounter with Oldham. “He played a show in upstate New York and showed up late but played this incredible set. I got to talk to him after the show and asked, ‘Right before you played your last song, you started to play something and stopped. I wondered what it was?’ He said, ‘Well, I was going to play a Mekons song that was shouted out, but it’s long, and there was probably only one weirdo out there who wanted to hear it.’ I said, ‘That was me,’” he laughed.
For now, a handful of shows in Michigan celebrate the release of Window in the Rhythm. He has no current plans to do a full tour, as he has a day job writing and editing. But he’s not opposed to doing some dates as an opener if the opportunities arise. For now, he is content with the satisfaction of a completed project and the excitement of sharing it with fans.
“I got what I wanted from making the record for myself. I wanted to give listeners the feeling I have in a dream. One theme I really wanted to come out with is the idea that we keep changing, even our relationship to our past keeps changing.” Fortunately, we have people like Fred Thomas and records like Window in the Rhythm to help us navigate that path.