NAME: The ThermalsPROGRESS REPORT: Releasing their fourth LP, Now We Can See, on April 7 (Kill Rock Stars). Recorded at Supernatural Sound in Oregon City.Portland's Thermals have released three LPs of consistently great punk rock. The changes between them have been of degrees: on each album they get a little more polished, a little more political, a little angrier. The band's next LP, Now We Can See, was written during 2007 and 2008, but there's something about it that seems to fit the mood of the country: it's a little more optimistic. "People say 'cautious optimism.' That's how we're approaching the first Obama term. But I think that's a pretty good phrase. That's gonna describe our record too," says guitarist/vocalist Hutch Harris. The band's 2006 record, The Body, The Blood, The Machine, drew the map of a country ruled by fascists and Christian extremists, where the only means of escape was running away and never looking behind you. This record finds a sort of self-awareness through another escape: death. "When we say, 'Now we can see,' we say, 'Now that we're dead we know everything and now we finally learned something,' explains Harris. "There's a lot of death on the record. It definitely picks up where we left off on the last album. It's songs about life from the perspective of death."