Australia’s the Temper Trap exists in a lineage of perfectly acceptable rock bands. There is a template to these acts. U2 is invariably somewhere in their genetic code, or if not them, Coldplay. (In the Temper Trap’s case, they opened on the Mylo Xyloto tour.) They tend to hit during the summer, not the winter. Every single comes with an electronic sheen and a volume of wordless vocals to rival any Gregorian chant troupe or wilderness masculinity junket. They are charming enough in short enough bursts to be made for the rock milieu of interchangeable syncs, snippets heard over festival noise, and crossovers to adult-contemporary radio. More people genuinely enjoy and connect to them than people—especially music critics—give them credit for. They are easy to love. They’re also, perhaps, easier to forget.
The Temper Trap’s distinguishing assets from this set are a falsetto by Dougy Mandagi that suggests he’s studied, if nowhere near mastered, Freddie Mercury, and has done so in the time since their last self-titled album, as difficult a sophomore work as this sort of band can muster. On Thick as Thieves, unsurprisingly, the group returns to the crowd-pleasing likes of Conditions, adding a couple of pop producers—Pascal Gabriel (Marina and the Diamonds, Goldfrapp) and Damian Taylor (the Killers, Björk) and every pop-rock trick in the arsenal. Everything is an anthem. The “Be My Baby” drums show up by track three; a “Boys of Summer” rip by track eight. “Fall Together” adds a drizzle of electronic pitter-patter, but nothing too obtrusive. A generation ago, bands like this might have affected angst, but 2016 calls for a sound far more bright-sided. Even when “Alive” threatens to sully the vibes with talk of taxes and “staring at a screen” (like everyone who deploys this cliché, Temper Trap doesn’t account for the possibility that those screens might transmit something worthwhile), it does so via soaring chorus of “so good to be alive.” It works as irony; it presumably works even better soaked in by sweaty outdoor crowds, its true intended use.
But just like last time around, the Temper Trap are better than all this invariably sounds. It’s easy to be cynical about a record like this, but the Temper Trap are nothing but not earnest; Thick as Thieves never comes off as anything but the exact record the band wants to make, which just happens to fit squarely into alt-rock trends. At their best, they achieve late-’90s VH1 rock heights, which is not such a bad target to hit; the title track is robust and genuinely wistful, and “So Much Sky,” if you ignore the obligatory stadium chant, is optimistic enough to hush any cynic. At their worst, they’re affected and not in an interesting way. (Mangi’s falsetto works more often than it doesn’t, especially when part of arrangement, but left unadorned, as on “Lost,” the vocal timbre suggests someone you wouldn’t ever want to get lost with, at least not alone.) But these are both extremes, on a record otherwise scrupulous to never sound at all extreme.
