Emperor Penguin - Gentlemen Thieves (2024) Hi-Res

“He’s got a reputation as a gentlemen thief, smashing up the kitchen with a rose between his teeth…” Just as following the Julian, as opposed to the Gregorian Calendar might lead to a difference of opinion on when Christmas Day falls (currently two weeks earlier), you may not know or even agree whether what you will shortly be able to hear is the sixth, or the seventh album release from Emperor Penguin ‘Gentlemen Thieves’. With its four members comprising two representatives of the Yorkshire Irish diaspora, a West Country peasant and the distant scion of a Scottish clan Chieftain, they’ve spent the last six years building on their founding mandate to provide the missing link between The Ramones and XTC. Their records and accompanying gigs have cultivated their reputations as musical and lyrical smart-arses and a searing live band. Their newest release on the Kool Kat Musik label finds them casting themselves in the role of Gentlemen Thieves, a literary and folkloric tradition of “bad boys with charm, and a veneer of manners masking their misdeeds” which runs from the legendary posh and thuggish Elizabethan “Cursed Crew” through the Mohocks and Nickers of Georgian London, via the 20th Century tales of Raffles, to the alleged delusions of grandeur of more recent criminal masterminds. Like all their albums, “Gentlemen Thieves” is an event. It’s wrapped in stunning artwork by their in-house designer, crafted with the assistance of producer Jamie McAvoy, studded with twelve new self-penned jewels, and hallmarked with their meticulous attention to detail, great tunes, rock & roll power, mischief, fun and mayhem. “Driving Blind” targets the menace of spliff-addled delivery drivers clogging the streets of the capital, “Pipistrelle” has Wednesday Addams and other weird kids creeping into your subconscious, “Silver Apples” muses on the fickleness of devotion and the poetry of W B Yeats, “Ladybird” rants against the annoying things in life and “Sonnez Les Matines” leads you through a nightmare dreamscape from a Rice Paper Tea House to the bottom of a freezing harbour. Once again, the genteel felons are abetted by their regular accomplice Lisa Mychols, who sings lead on “You Are My Atmosphere” and duets with Nigel "Stiletto" Winfield on “I Wouldn't Put it Like That”. GREAT!!