Thieves (band)

Thieves
Origin	London, United Kingdom
Genres	Pop, Soul, Indie
Years active	1992–1994
Past members	David McAlmont Saul Freeman

Thieves was a British pop duo active during the early 1990s. It was most notable for being the band on which both members – singer David McAlmont and multi-instrumentalist/producer Saul Freeman (the latter to go on to trip-hop band Mandalay) – based their subsequent musical careers.

Critically feted by the British weekly music press during their lifetime, the duo also won two Single of the Week awards in Melody Maker but split shortly before the scheduled release of their debut album (which was later released as McAlmont’s debut solo album).

David McAlmont (born David Irving McAlmont, 2 May 1967, Croydon, England), originally of Guyanese/Nigerian heritage, was raised as a Christian and spent his early years in Croydon, Cardiff and Guyana. He began his musical life in Guyana singing in church choirs. His Christian upbringing would clash with his growing realisation of his homosexuality in his teenage years . By the age of 20, his experiences had ultimately led him to decide to be true to his sexual nature.

While exploring the London independent pop scene of the early 1990s, McAlmont encountered Saul Freeman, an accomplished multi-instrumentalist and programmer with whom he formed Thieves (naming the band after a work by Jean Cocteau). Freeman was influenced predominantly by post-punk pop and rock bands (such as Scritti Politti, Associates and Cocteau Twins), and Thieves blended this with McAlmont’s own gospel and soul influences to create a lush and highly textural pop music drawing equally on “black” music and “white” avant-garde indie rock. Freeman and McAlmont opted to remain as a duo, using detailed backing tapes and programmed percussion tracks (Live, Freeman concentrated on playing strongly-processed electric guitar).

Thieves began playing concerts in small London venues, where they immediately began to attract attention. The group’s format of black singer/white instrumentalist was not in itself unusual, but as a black frontman who was also a flamboyantly “out” homosexual (with presentation to match) McAlmont was seen as an exotic rarity, as was his striking three-octave voice. McAlmont’s outrageous dress sense (and taste for cross-dressing) also became notorious, with one review describing him as “a strawberry daiquiri in a dress”.

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