After their impressive first album, Guillotine, which sounded like a mashed-up mixtape of every band
British India loved and wanted you to listen to right now,
Thieves is, despite the title, a more original affair. While questing for their own sound they mix power pop and grunge, the latter influence especially noticeable in their lyrics with references to angsty topics like suicide, feeling like the walls are closing in, and being underweight. Their youthful excitedness and pop tendencies keep any of those topics from weighing things down, and even the weary "I Said I'm Sorry" and the disenchanted teenage anthem "Airport Tags" manage to somehow sound uplifting and hopeful. Only "This Dance Is Loaded," with its debt to
the Music's brand of danceable guitar rock, sounds immediately like anyone else in the way that songs from their first album tended to. What has remained and been refined from Guillotine is the keen wit evident in songs like "Funeral for a Trend" and the kind of lyrics you want to sing or shout along with no matter whether you know what they mean or not -- "You can't fuck with this real shit, homeboy/20,000 kids all on their mobile phones!" is a perfect example. "God is dead, now meet the kids" is an opening line almost as perfect as Guillotine's "You make friends with ugly people/so you'll stand out in a crowd." The band has found the beginnings of their own sound in songs like "You Will Die and I Will Take Over" with its quirky bass intro leading into a drum roll buildup before guitars splash in over the top.
Thieves may not have the immediacy of Guillotine, but its own considerable charms become evident on repeated listens. ~ Jody Macgregor