The Temper Trap - Thick As Thieves
5/10
Australia’s own ‘big in 2009’ The Temper Trap have gone and put themselves together a new record. Alas, the disposition of this, their third studio album, is not quite as sweet as their turn-of-the-decade effort.
Thick As Thieves feels like something of a non-event, which doesn’t quite make sense considering the stadium-coated guitar riffs and those rising, melodic choruses. The Temper Trap have aspirations of big sound and the shame is that this pulls singer Dougy Mandagi from where he can do his best work. There’s not a jot of tenderness on show and leaving the careful, quivering tendencies of old so completely behind is a mistake. Too often Mandagi gets drowned out by what these songs want to be, though there are some decent spots here.
Alive sees the band inject some more substantial verve into things, and Tombstone is the pick of the record with its Kurt Vile-esque verses. Unfortunately everything else is too steeped in platitudes, too lacking in invention and imagination to really have much impact. Thick As Thieves ends up going through all the motions you’d expect but rarely manages to make any of them feel worthwhile.
5/10
