I've got to give a big up to DJ/Design fiend Jake King (he hosts the dope dance party freakout every Saturday night at Hangfire) who put me on to Thieves Like Us months before anyone else had heard their buzz, and their album Play Music has been essential listening for these cold winter months.
Apparently, TLU's album is finally getting a proper U.S. release March 10th on Fantasy Memory, and they will drop a new EP in April on Shelf Life. Good news.
Their sound is cool (in senses of both temperature and hipness), a sonic tangent of the increasing push of electronic music toward something that is both danceable and yet mellow at the same time. (See Fujiya & Miyagi). This is just upbeat enough to keep you in a groove during an iPod accompanied commute, but not so crazy that you'll break out glow sticks and ask the guy next to you for a vapo-rub blowback on your way to work.
The trio is testimony to good international relations, Pontus Berghe (drums) and Bjorn Berglund (keyboards) are from Sweden, and Andy Grier (vocals) is from the United States. They met at a picnic in Berlin. And the album was pieced together during sessions all over the world...
Their musical product lands somewhere between the band's homelands, specifically France, and is reminiscent of a more technologically advanced version of the synthwave stuff going on during the late 70's/early 80s. (See last year's brilliant compilation BIPPP). TLU eschews some of the prevalent (both then and now) post-punk basslines though in exchange for a house-influenced four-on-the-floor foundation that is perfect for Grier's fragile vocal stylings.
This is what the band says about their origins in their bio: "We were fans of rock and pop music and would try to find places to go out drinking and dancing, but all we would hear is techno and electro. The women didn't seem to like us at all. We started deejaying ourselves...We would play old krautrock (nobody recognized it), italo disco, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Factory Records stuff, and even new hip-hop...In Berlin, we heard and saw enough electronic music we didn't like. We thought we could do it better so we started our own band."
Check them out.
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