Play Music

Album review

Yes, it's another late-2000s band inspired by 1980s post-punk and electro-disco. Thieves Like Us might be distinguished, slightly, by their jet-setting international backstory, some traces of which are audible in these grooves: a sprinkling of synth pop sweetness from Sweden (home to 2/3 of the group); a glob of garish glamour from their erstwhile headquarters in New York City; a fistful of French-touch filter 'n' thump, per their present Parisian base of operations. Most of all, their music is marked by a gritty, beguiling moodiness and seamy decadence that feel somewhat romantically redolent of Berlin, where the band met and formed. (It's notable and curious that they never lived in England, and particularly in Manchester, where one might trace perhaps the most prominent roots of their sound.) Still, possibly because this welter of influences adds up to something a bit too indiscriminately intercontinental, these Thieves do often come off as just another trendy outfit hawking tawdry 20-year time warps, albeit with more streamlined sonics than many. They're at their worst, or at least their most redundant, on half-hearted would-be dancefloor fare like the dopey disco of "Drugs in My Body" (their Kitsuné-approved signature single; knock-off filter-house with none of the requisite joie de vivre), its faster, electro-burbling B-side "Fass," or the thumpy-twerky "Miss You." The problem isn't that these songs are derivative, although they are, but that they're just deadly dull, which is about the only thing a dance jam definitely shouldn't be. They're fairly melodically anemic, for one thing, but the clearest culprit is Andy Grier's flat, tiresome vocals, which barely bother with pitch, let alone inflection (they don't even sound knowingly bored and blank-eyed in a deliberate, stylized way). It makes some sense, then, that the best moments on Play Music are the more sober and sedate numbers, typically drenched in a lush synthetic haze, wherein Grier's vocals, when they're audible at all, take a backseat to the frequently luminous synth and drum programming. Thankfully, these pieces make up a large proportion of the album, among them the shimmering, slow-burning opener, the pulsating "Headlong into Night," and the uncharacteristically warm and open-feeling "Desire," which projects a certain looseness within its gently churning Motorik pulse.

© K. Ross Hoffman /TiVo