Ian Thornley didn’t set out to save rock and roll with Grace Street, but he may have accidentally reminded everyone why it’s still worth making. In a streaming era allergic to guitar solos and seven-minute instrumentals, the Big Wreck frontman doubled down on complexity, emotion, and volume—and made one of the boldest records of 2017 in the process.
Grace Street is that rare thing: a sprawling, experimental, guitar-forward rock album released in a time when most of the rock section had been moved to the clearance bin. “It's ballsy to be a rock band in 2017,” Thornley admits. “I feel pretty endangered right now.”
But Grace Street isn’t a plea for relevance—it’s a “selfish” record, in the best way. “It took me a long time to realize that maybe you should make music for yourself first and foremost,” Thornley says. “As selfish as that sounds, you’re not going to be happy making what other people want to hear.”
This third post-reunion album was born from freedom rather than strategy. “I was finally with management and a label that were like, ‘Let Ian go in and make the record he wants to make,’” he recalls. “As opposed to, ‘We gotta do this, we have to try that, we’re gonna do it this way.’” The result is a Technicolor wash of sounds and ideas—some riff-driven, others delicate, and one, in particular, just plain indulgent.
That would be the seven-and-a-half-minute instrumental “Skybunk March,” a guitar-blitz fever dream that started as a jam and became a Frankenstein’s monster of sewn-together riffs from the cutting room floor. “Garth walked in and said, ‘You guys should do an instrumental,’ and we were all like, ‘Hurr durr,’” Thornley remembers. “Then I got home and started sewing all these ideas together.” He swears they weren’t going to play it live, but of course they did. “Now we’re doing it at soundcheck so I don’t blow my voice out.”
And yes, he’s aware that seven minutes of instrumental shredding might not be the crowd-pleaser. “As soon as you start launching into an instrumental, like, all the chicks just bail,” he jokes. “It’s just guitar nerds, and the audience gets cut down by three-quarters.”
Still, Thornley’s not here for easy hooks or algorithmic singles. He’s here for the chase, the experiment, the “musical conversation.” “The research never stops. The growth never stops. The learning never stops,” he says. “I still don’t feel that I’ve arrived at something.”
If Albatross was the reunion, and Ghosts was the proof Big Wreck was really back, Grace Street is the band throwing paint at the canvas and finding out it’s good enough to hang in a gallery. “I adore it,” Thornley says. “I think it’s a beautiful piece of work and I’m really, really proud of it.”
Still, he’s not above picking favorites. “You Don’t Even Know”—with its swagger and falsetto-laced strut—caught even him off guard. “It popped out and it was like, okay, now it’s going to be like ‘Miss You,’” he laughs. “Which I adore. Hats off, boys.”
The Stones influence is intentional. Sort of. “We usually lean more toward the Beatles, Zeppelin, that vibe,” he says. “But this was just our own sort of twist. A great groove.”
With Grace Street, Ian Thornley isn’t asking for your validation. He’s too busy chasing whatever comes next. “What’s good is good,” he shrugs. “The rest… I don’t care.”
Listen to the interview above and watch the video to "One Good Piece Of Me" below.
