Photo by Valerie Paschall.

What’s the measure of a good show? If it’s a count of crowd-pleasing songs, sing-a-longs or thunderous shouts of approval, The Thermals are way ahead of the game. Their three-minute songs are bouncy and quick with memorable lines to spare. So, in order to differentiate between this Thermals show and say, other Thermals shows, the best measure of how good the show was is how badly I got bruised up and pushed around by the young and exuberant crowd.

Number of times I regretted not pulling my hair up: Eleven.

At the previous Thermals show at the Black Cat, the first “mosh pit” of the night occurred during “Here’s Your Future,” which they tucked several minutes into their set. This time, the band opened with it, and the yelling and jumping that accompanied singer/guitarist Hutch Harris’s righteously amped-up delivery was, in a word, overwhelming. This immediately set the tone for the show and sealed that there was no way of getting out of this crazy (and very very happy) crowd.

Number of times I accidentally hit the poor girl in front of me with my camera (I’m sorry!): Three.

This crowd knew the words to all of the songs. They knew the college radio standards like “Pillar of Salt” and “No Culture Icons,” but they also knew the words of their newer songs like “I Don’t Believe You” and other tracks off of Personal Life. Harris kept asking the crowd if it was okay for them to play those new songs, as if he was going to get some sort of negative response or lose the momentum. However, the new tracks, while still not as breakneck as anything off of More Parts Per Million, were hardly slow or even mid-tempo.