Latest Album Reviews: Temper Trap, Ngaiire, Dope Lemon, Garbage and Peter, Bjorn & John

Do Temper Trap keep their cool? Have Garbage brought the goods? Is Ngaiire feelin’ irie? How dopey is Dope Lemon? Is Peter, Bjorn and John a yawn?

Temper Trap’s Thick as Thieves sees them return to the playground with guitars and falsetto.

Do Temper Trap keep their cool? Have Garbage brought the goods? Is Ngaiire feelin’ irie? How dopey is Dope Lemon? Is Peter, Bjorn and John a yawn?

THE TEMPER TRAP

THICK AS THIEVES

LIBERATION

3.5 stars

The Temper Trap album cover Thick as Thieves

WELCOME back falsetto and guitars. They’re the first things you hear on this third Temper Trap album, and two key ingredients that were sparse on the second Temper Trap album.

Thick as Thieves aims to recapture some of the magic of their debut album Conditions without, to their credit, just shamelessly Frankensteining up Sweet Disposition 2.0. It’s also designed to clean up some of the commercial mess of their more experimental self-titled second album that killed a bit of momentum.

With an elephant-like three year gestation period and, tellingly, external writers drafted into their creative process, Melbourne’s The Temper Trap survived losing a band member and key writer with a little help from their new friends.

Everyone’s on the same page: crowd seducing global anthems that will work from Pittsburg to Portsmouth, LA to Adelaide. The hired hands don’t so much push them out of their comfort zone but help them do what they do best. So Much Sky, one of the oldest tracks here, is all deep bass and high vocals with chantable refrains. The title track does it better, really pushing that quiet/loud thing home with a euphoric chorus.

Lost hovers over the similar button marked epic that last album’s stunning ballad Trembling Hands did; Lost sounds like the instant radio hit their various record labels must have been banking on.

Although single Fall Together (written with Lana Del Rey cohort Justin Parker) also sounds like a guaranteed hit and better than 90-per-cent of what’s in the charts and on the radio now. Yet, once again, The Temper Trap haven’t infiltrated the business end of the singles chart. Even Sweet Disposition shamefully stalled at No.14 in Australia. Fortunately, that means they’re probably seen as an album act.

Burn and Tombstone are the only two moments here fully written in-house. Burn neatly straddles the previous two albums - some U2-style guitar riffs, with widescreen keyboard and a stonkin’ guitar solo for good measure. Anthem sorted. Tombstone sees bassist Jonathon Aherne on lead vocals and his wife Britni on backing vocals. Which, when you have the remarkable Dougy Mandagi as your singer, is an odd move, but it does push the song into Go Betweens territory.

Alive (written with Ladyhawke helper Pascal Gabriel) has a spiky 80s vibe that works a treat, Riverena has more of that New Order sunken bass and punter-ready chorus melodies.

Summer’s Almost Gone (written with Frank Ocean pal Malay) has a great melancholy feel, What If I’m Wrong brings the keyboards back while Ordinary World suddenly channels Queen for a wall of vocals that is unexpected, and indeed one of the few unexpected moments here and therefore a welcome surprise.

And while this is a solid record and will slot nicely between the eight or so live anthems they’re already lucky enough to already posses, it feels a bit over-thought in parts - like they needed help to do what once came naturally to get the blasted record out. Whatever it took, the results are undeniably strong if lacking risks - this is everything The Temper Trap do very well indeed./CAMERON ADAMS

Sounds like: Trap to the future

In a word: faithful

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Originally published as Latest Album Reviews: Temper Trap, Ngaiire, Dope Lemon, Garbage and Peter, Bjorn & John