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| Thephoenix |
 When today’s musical magpies look back to the ’80s to steal the sonic shiny items that catch their ears’ fancy, they gravitate toward the Day-Glo sheen of that era’s false promise and anthemic vacuousness. Thieves Like Us, however, are not that breed of pilferer.Although they steal from the past (shamelessly! gratuitously!), their music is about creating an alternate ’80s that captures the bottomed-out loneliness born of excess and restless indulgence. Their debut, last year’s Play Music, still fooled you into waltzing onto the dance floor, with 808-pounders like “Drugs in My Body.” Again and Again is a beast of a different color, the sound of a classic New Order or Pet Shop Boys track — if someone had first sunk his incisors in and drained the blood from it. Death dirges like “Forget Me Not,” “Mercy,” and “Silence” manage to be funereal and joyless without appropriating goth tropes. Instead, the way these young Europeans utilize cascading synth figures — which loop and descend like a dying message in the farthest reaches of outer space — suggests a final sad request for one last dance before the inevitable apocalypse. Boredom and forlorn ennui have never sounded so charmingly chipper....full text |
| Thephoenix. |
| When today’s musical magpies look back to the ’80s to steal the sonic shiny items that catch their ears’ fancy, they gravitate toward the Day-Glo sheen of that era’s false promise and anthemic vacuousness. Thieves Like Us, however, are not that breed of pilferer. Although they steal from the past (shamelessly! gratuitously!), their music is about creating an alternate ’80s that captures the bottomed-out loneliness born of excess and restless indulgence. Their debut, last year’s Play Music, still fooled you into waltzing onto the dance floor, with 808-pounders like “Drugs in My Body.” Again and Again is a beast of a different color, the sound of a classic New Order or Pet Shop Boys track — if someone had first sunk his incisors in and drained the blood from it. Death dirges like “Forget Me Not,” “Mercy,” and “Silence” manage to be funereal and joyless without appropriating goth tropes. Instead, the way these young Europeans utilize cascading synth figures — which loop and descend like a dying message in the farthest reaches of outer space — suggests a final sad request for one last dance before the inevitable apocalypse. Boredom and forlorn ennui have never sounded so charmingly chipper....full text |
| Musiciansear |
| The darkly stylish electronic/post-punk threesome Thieves Like Us are named for the 1984 New Order song (as opposed to the 1974 Robert Altman film), and they take more than just their moniker from Manchester's darkly stylish electronic/post-punk pioneers. Their timely, '80s-indebted approach has garnered comparisons to numerous dance-pop acts of the late 2000s, including Hot Chip and Crystal Castles, but their mix of gloom and glitter may be most closely aesthetically aligned with the seedy electro-disco revisionists of the Italians Do It Better axis (Glass Candy, the Chromatics), groups who employ the tools and techniques of dance music but seem more interested in evoking hazily decadent atmospheres than inspiring actual dancing. Swedes Pontus Berghe (drums) and Björn Berglund (keyboards) met the American Andy Grier (vocals) in Berlin's Mauer Park in 2002, and the trio began hitting the nightlife together, a gang of unregistered expats struggling with the language and culture of a foreign metropolis. Uninspired by the city's techno-oriented club scene, they took matters into their own hands by DJing together, and eventually starting to produce their own electronic music. Somewhat ironically, ...full text |
Thieves Like Us lyrics
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