Album Review

The Candle Thieves – Happiness Blues EP

• 13th Sep 2010

The rise of music technology available to an artist these days, to capture their most creative and thoughtful moments, has resulted in a magnitude of electro knob turners breaking out of the safe confinements of their bedrooms into the big, wide world of commercial pop.

The Peterborough two-piece The Candle Thieves are one of these bands. Armed with a sparse array of Toytown instrumentation and a more ‘down to earth’ approach to pop music – this summer they invited fans to play private shows, whether it be a pub, boat, a party with a bouncy castle – their music is light, easily welcomed into the ears as sweet, sparkly pop music at its stripped down best.

With the rise of bedroom artists finding their way from America to the rest of the world, this country has its own ‘Owl City’ in The Candle Thieves and this is justly needed in the disposable world of commercially digestible and money chasing record labels.

Their E.P titled ‘Happiness Blues’ rings with dreamy doses of electronic optimism. It almost sounds like a soundtrack to a film, a film about a very happy heart monitor giving out electric bleeps of soothing condolences.

Opening track ‘The Sunshine Song’ has layers of sound with its clicking programmed drum beats complimented by the sugar-sweet melodies of a casio keyboard. Vocal lines are illusory in their variations. Take ‘Annabelle’s Song’ with its falsetto and its choir like middle-eight, the ‘nah, nah, nah’s’ of ‘Paper Aeroplanes’ and the stand-out finishing track ‘Balloon No.2’ with its deliverance of pop melancholy beautifully presented with a fantastic exchange between singer and keys.

The Candle Thieves are making music on their own terms and it shows. They have one of those sounds that just make you feel better when listening to it. It’s a fun, innocent journey through the musicians talent in creating unique and happy pop music. Definitely a band to watch out for.