• Courtesy
• thayerperiod, All Dogs Go to Heaven

(Self-released, digital)

Things that used to be permissible in kids' movies: smoking, drinking, gambling, death, shocking images of Hell — all of which appear in Don Bluth, Gary Goldman and Dan Kuenster's 1989 animated classic All Dogs Go to Heaven. The '80s were wild!

Thematically, the film examines philosophical questions about life, death, altruism and second chances. Most prominently, it ponders inherent worth. The movie tells us all dogs go to heaven — not just good boys.

Burlington electronic-pop producer Thayer Nichols, aka thayerperiod, named his latest album after the canine caper, a childhood favorite, because it "encapsulated a lot of the themes I was going for on the album," he wrote to Seven Days in an email. Full of love songs, All Dogs Go to Heaven seeks out and celebrates the inherent good in everyone and everything.

A recent graduate of the University of Hertfordshire in England, Nichols conceived the album after a conversation with a friend who asked him why he only wrote sad songs. Writing about various shades of love is new territory for thayerperiod, whose recent albums Chasing Glory and Would You Trade Your Hands for Wings? put him squarely in sad boi territory.

That doesn't mean All Dogs Go to Heaven is a cheery listen, exactly. The 24-year-old producer is still drawn to dark moodscapes and emotionally wrenching melodies. At times, his obfuscated, processed vocals keep him distant as waves of unsettling synths, punctuated by restless beats, pour over him. Counterpoint: Some of his songs sound like giddy, digital toy-box explosions. And some sound like both.

Nichols contemplates different kinds of love, sometimes with utter earnestness, as on space-techno cut "10,000 Dogs." Spiritually indebted to another pooch picture, the openhearted track ("Dogs, I love them so ... Why can't I daydream about / Owning 10,000 dogs anyway?") recalls the musical finale "Dalmatian Plantation" from Disney's One Hundred and One Dalmatians.

Less literal and somehow more playful than a song about hoarding dogs, "Dandelion Love" juxtaposes flickering beats with rounded jabs of bass as the artist croons about a "foolish" kind of love. "Might be conversing with trees / Or turning my thumbs green / Finding joy in what we took for granted," he sings, his instrumentation devolving into a pipe-organ benediction.

Pitching his vocals up and down an octave on cybernetic minuet "Judgement Day," Nichols is at his most abstract. Cherubs, ravens, lightning, acid rain and a reminder that "all dogs go up" swirl on a courtly cut full of streaming synths and stream-of-consciousness lyrics.

Add Nichols to the roster of twentysomething Vermont producers dismantling pop sensibilities. We haven't seen a local singer-songwriter/producer with this level of romantic cyborg energy since Ebn Ezra's/Ethan Wells' Pax Romana in 2017. While Wells was drawn to a 1980s retro-futurism, Nichols' work is ultracontemporary, with a smashed-up, hyper-pop sound sprinkled with hints of SoundCloud-rap energy.

All Dogs Go to Heaven is available on all major streaming platforms.