Slideshows Review
Slideshows is the second studio album release by Australian rock band Thirsty Merc that was released on April 21, 2007. The first single from the album was "20 Good Reasons" which was the group's first top 10 single in Australia. The second single to be released from the album will be "The Hard Way". Slideshows marks the first album with guitarist Sean Carey since joining the band just after the first studio album's release. As with the band's first album, Slideshows is produced by Lindsay Gravina and engineered by Rob Long. The album is presently a feature album at NineMSN and all its songs are available for a listen there.
The cover art is a high contrast silhouetted Polaroid photo of the band standing in a line (from left to right: Rai Thistlethwayte, Sean Carey, Phil Stack and Karl Robertson) but you cannot see their faces. The silhouettes are dark brown against an amber background. The whole image is distressed, giving it an "aged" look. The logo for Thirsty Merc is different to the debut EP and studio album (which were both the same as one another), in a Cooper type font with some graphic fill-art above. As the photos were from a polaroid camera (or at least made to look like they were) the polaroid white border and image artifacts found in a polaroid image are not trimmed but featured on the images throughout and on the cover, further providing a "distressed" feel. The cover of the rear of the album is a photo of the band and, alike to the front cover, in high contrast, however not as high and the image is not silhouetted, so you can see the band member's faces. The inside slip maintains the colorus throughout, remaining in brown, amber and general autumn colours. The single "20 Good Reasons" uses the same basic colours, logo and a similar high contrast image, consistent with the album.
The album includes twelve songs. The songs are, according to the band, more mature than the debut album by the band. The first song publicly and widely released was "The Vision", released in January 2007 on the band's official website, followed a few weeks later by "20 Good Reasons" which was later announced and released as the album's first single. The band has since removed "The Vision" from their MySpace, replacing it with "The Hard Way", which has been confirmed the second single from the album.
Originally, there were two distinct versions of the album's tracklisting advertised, one from the band's own website and another from several other sources. The main difference between the two versions of the track listing was that the song "Whole World Reminds Me Of You" was not included on the listing on the band's own website. As this song is the only one that uses the word fuck, it's a possibility this tracklisting was one that was proposed to avoid the language warning label.
Otherwise, the only difference was the track sequence. Notably, both versions began with "She's All I Got" and end with "Homesick." The version released was the iTunes and Warner Music version, meanwhile the track listing on the band's own website remains as it originally was, however no versions in stores or online contain the track listing from their site.
