British India 'Thieves'

Posted in Music by TheAge on Jul 19, 07:00AM

British India
Theives
Flashpoint/Shock

There's not a memorable melody on Thieves, the second album from Melbourne tyros British India, but it's not really a problem.

The quartet has the pale skin and diffident posture of indie rock kids on the make and the 10 cuts assembled give voice to the genre's ability to make self-loathing and recrimination into unifying anthems you can jump up and down to. The group has an instrumental energy that neatly serves the lippy yelp of frontman Declan Melia, turning pop-culture detritus into overloaded panic on 'This Dance is Loaded' and setting up a generation gap for positive effect ('God is Dead, Meet the Kids').

Getting the young and restless pose right is a tricky art and Melia teeters between self-righteousness and canny observations, but for their fanbase chances are he's articulating a sense of disenchantment that's been stirring in their post-VCE lives. For the rest of us there's the stream of madcap bile and guitar punctuation of 'You Will Die and I Will Take Over' or the swelling 'Mona Lisa Overdrive' to appreciate.

The one specific failing is the closing 'The Golden Years' - the faux-epic doesn't suit them.

Craig Mathieson