This blistering follow-up to IV THIEVES’ debut album ‘The Greatest White Liar’ (Nic Armstrong & The Thieves) sees not one but three of the band’s four members take their turn at providing lead vocals this time around in what is an all-out assault on the senses. With a trio of songwriters, the potential for varied results is realised in a collection linked by target-hitting power-pop tempered with the devil-may care sensibilities of rock n’ roll in full flight.
The huge range of rock n’ roll styles mirrored here make the album play like a kaleidoscopic voyage The appeal is wide, ranging and delayed, with even the world-conquering epic feel upstaged at times by the variety. From the gentle psychedelics of ‘The Sound & The Fury’, to its’ successor, the lurching, stomping grind-heavy ‘The Day Is A Downer’, every track is sprinkled with the melodic outpourings of a jangling Rickenbacker. Lyrically, it has a positive flood of images creating a trance of dense poetry.
Their sidewinding stab at the alarming pace of day-to-day life kicks up in a frenzied wall of noise, a feet stamping, head-banging and relentless ode to the living hell that darkens the everyday routine.
A finger is taken off the vinyl pulse of ‘Mother’s Dilemma’ and a stomping burst of fire is soothed by the rumbling bass melodies set deep in the centre of the action. Crashes and twangs blur the periphery of this lost and lonely slice of aimless wanderings.
‘All The Time’ kicks in, and the blues skank out in a psychobilly storm of distortion, fast paced and vigorous. Stick-tapping drop-outs and sea shanties merge, and the sense is of a band who are probing in a bid to establish guitar-driven rock’s hidden ingredients. It’s a magical mystery tour, I guess – but with the emphasis on ‘magical’. The consequences, it seems, are far-reaching, as no stone is left unturned.
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‘Have Pity’ is a teddy-boy WMC jam that’s studded with classic licks and alarm bells that ring out as the percussion races with your fast-beating heart. Bass scales descend as the vocals follow the guitars crashing into the walls, the sanity lost in a gospel mantra. ‘Lay Me Back Down’ has a slash of reality cutting through the psychedelic reverse hurdy-gurdy, out of which pour odd rising and falling waves of dancehall echo.
Finishing with a truly brain-swerving wall of looping rock-opera progressiveness that is like IV THIEVES throwing everything into their final chance to accomplish their unifying rock n roll ressurection. The progressive acoustic break juxtaposes with an increasing mesh of momentum-gathering, drum-roll encased riffology. The sense of goodbye is like the credits are rolling, but the film has been a belter. I hear jet engines in there too, as the band whip it up big-time before going down in a radio-dial blaze of cymbal-crashes. Phew!
A veritable explosion of guitar-based indie-pop awaits the listener, who will be immersed in a powerful and hypnotic state by these tunes as they seamlessly grow in and out of each other in a bid to imbed themselves into your heart.
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