Saturday Looks Good To Me - Fill Up the Room (2007)

Embracing a wildly eclectic variety of melodic influences, Saturday Looks Good to Me is the brainchild of indie pop wunderkind Fred Thomas, who has been the only constant member of the group since its inception in 2000. Saturday Looks Good to Me began as a fanciful project by Thomas (previously a member of Flashpapr and Lovesick) to create a record by a band that didn't exist; with the help of a handful of like-minded friends, Thomas wrote and produced a set of nine songs that drew on '60s pop sounds (Motown, Brian Wilson, and Phil Spector are clear reference points) while also taking cues from contemporary indie rock. Thomas gave the project the name Saturday Looks Good to Me, and the nine tunes were released on a limited-edition vinyl LP by the Here Forever Always label in the spring of 2000 (a CD reissue appeared two years later). A CD-R album of more music from the phantom group, Cruel August Moon (aka I Take a Chance Every Time) followed in the fall of 2000, but Saturday Looks Good to Me was one of several projects for Thomas until 2002, when the pop-oriented emo group Saves the Day came across a copy of the debut album and was impressed enough to invite SLGTM to open for them on a national tour. Thomas assembled a band to play the songs on-stage, and the tour was successful enough that Saturday Looks Good to Me not only won a new legion of fans but landed a deal with the Illinois-based independent label Polyvinyl Records. In March 2003, Polyvinyl released the second full-length SLGTM effort, All Your Summer Songs, while their third, Every Night, came out in the fall of 2003; Every Night was released on both vinyl and CD, with the same songs appearing on both formats but in different recordings or mixes. Between albums, Thomas and his crew released a steady stream of singles, EPs, and CD-R titles, and the 2006 collection Sound on Sound featured the lion's share of Saturday Looks Good to Me's non-LP tracks. By this time Thomas was also taking Saturday Looks Good to Me on the road on a regular basis, and the group's growing following and reputation for sterling, idiosyncratic pop captured the attention of the venerable indie label K Records, who stepped forward to issue SLGTM's fourth proper album, Fill Up the Room, in the fall of 2007. The band's live-based sound experiments also informed their Cold Colors EP, which arrived in 2007 and hinted at Thomas' atmospheric electronics to come with City Center. Almost six years passed before another Saturday Looks Good to Me album appeared. In the interim, Thomas immersed himself in a number of different projects including the aforementioned Ryan Howard collaboration City Center and the surf pop act Swimsuit. When One Kiss Ends It All arrived in 2013, it featured an array of female vocalists and combined infectious, summery pop with an inventive production ethic.