UTP Reviews: Streetlight Manifesto's The Hands That Thieve

In order to prevent Cait from hunting me down and smothering me with a pillow in my sleep I will now proceed to write a review of The Hands That Thieve by Streetlight Manifesto.

The big reason that I haven’t written a review yet, besides being lazy, is that I really like to take my time with Streetlight Manifesto albums. Or album if you’re counting the ones that has been released since I started to write reviews. I wasn’t enthusiastic about Somewhere In The Between when it first came out, and it was not until a couple months later that I understood how good of an album it was. Things were quite different with The Hands That Thieve (THTT). From the first listen I was getting into nearly every track on the album. Time will tell, but this newest release may emerge as my overall favorite Streetlight album.

If you’re a regular listener to Streetlight Manifesto then this album will not surprise you. The band isn’t afraid to draw on new or different influences, but they never truly experiment or change their style. For a band as strong as Streetlight what would be the point in trying to be “progressive” or whatever you want to call it? Besides the changes between each Streetlight release tend to be subtle but impactful. Somewhere in The Between drew more heavily from Tomas Kalnoky’s Eastern European heritage and transitioned to a metaphor-heavy lyrical style that certainly tapped into different imagery compared to his debut albums with Streetlight and Catch 22. Kalnoky also got more expressive with his guitar work as fans got teased with on the re-recorded Keasbey Nights.  There are definitely some novel moments during the course of the album that I’ll address, but chances are if you haven’t heard this album you’ll still have a reasonable idea of what it sounds like.

Before I’d listened to the album at all some of friends said that parts of the album just sounded like noise. After many, many listens I’m pretty sure that noise is actually jazz. It is generally known that the other six guys that make up the band are pretty big into jazz and more experimental music. That tendency shows through on several tracks and was a nice to touch to break up the expected Streetlight sound. Little bits of guitar work throughout the album do the same. “With Any Sort of Certainty” would sound like any other Streetlight song except for the almost Western-style intro and cool little solo four minutes into the song. The other big thing I noticed is that all the time Tomas has been spending singing acoustic sets has very much bled over into Streetlight Manifesto proper. He offers more inflection and notes than on prior albums and seems far more committed to vocal melodies than punk rock shouts. Both work and I like both and we get it all on THTT.

Before wrapping up I would like to briefly touch on the lyrics since I always do that anyways. What fans get here is a mixture of personal and metaphorical songs that harken back to each of the band’s (and Tomas’) previous releases at various times. I often felt like this really fulfilled the destiny of the kid that once wrote “Kristina She Don’t Know I Exist.” I mean that some of the literalness from Keasbey Nights is back and is highly impactful. On the first few listens “Toe to Toe” struck me the wrong way though. The chorus struck me as being kind of, well, bad. Weeks later and I still feel like they are cheesy, but I’ll be damned if they were the first lyrics that I wanted to sing-a-long with.

I’ve already said this The Hands That Thieve may be my favorite Streetlight Manifesto album; I’m not sure what else I could add. I think the album is phenomenal. Anyone that disagrees is either wrong or suffering from an upper body injury.