King Thief: Read Them, Hear Them & See Them Live

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King Thief has gained a loyal local following with their powerful lyrics and sound, and they have started to gain widespread recognition outside the gateway city from the 2007 album they recorded with St. Louis label Shock City Records titled The Inferno. Busy at work on their new album and working on tour dates, King Thief's lead singer, Brooks Bracken, took some time out to talk to ToastedRav about the band and what makes their sound stand above the crowd.

The terms "Rock" and "Alternative" are so generic. If you had to describe your sound, what would you say?

Dramatic Rock and Roll. At it's core, our music is straight forward rock music, but we add a lot of dark cinematic and often dramatic elements with our chord structures and our vocal melodies. Not to mention my strange curiosity with death and the afterlife peppered into our lyrics. The end picture is dramatic rock and roll.

Influences are important to many bands. Who would you say are King Thief's major influences, and how?

Muse and Radiohead somehow always end up at the top of this list. Even though we don't sound anything like Radiohead, we all really respect their different approach to music. Muse is a band that we all love and sometimes our music gets classified as muse-ish. I think that's because both bands are pretty piano heavy at times. I think the best answer at this stage in our musical career would have to be "ourselves". We have been playing music together for roughly 10 years now. We kind of invented our own little niche sound that we all love and we know each others style of playing like the back of our hands. So I can speak for myself at least and say that my band mates are a major influence of mine (as weirdly sentimental as that might seem).

What is your song writing process like? Where do your ideas for lyrics come from?

Our song writing process consists of all of us sitting in a circle (literally) with instruments in hand, one person will start playing a riff and the rest of us jam on it until we have a part. Then we analyze the feel of that particular part and discuss what kind of feel the next part should have...and so on. Once we have all of the pieces, we construct the puzzle. It's a very slow process and sometimes quite painful. But in the end it is well worth it. That is the one thing we are trying to work on. We are trying to write faster. Let the music write itself more than overanalyzing everything. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But like I said, in the end it's well worth it. Somehow we always figure out a way to make the song work, it might take us five minutes or five weeks, but it always works out.

You guys are gaining some serious attention nationally as well as internationally lately. What is coming up for King Thief in the future?

At the moment, we are booking our schedule for 2009. The beginning of the year is pretty light in terms of shows because we are focusing on writing our new album. We are about eight songs deep right now. This album is shaping up to be very interesting. Compared to our last album (The Inferno) the new songs are a little more playful, yet somehow darker. Every element that makes up our sound is turned up to the max. All five of us are really embracing our sound, and stepping out even further, experimenting with some different instrumentation and structures.

What is the one thing about King Thief (music wise or as a band in general) that you think gets overlooked the most?

I'm not really sure. I think maybe the amount of work that we put into it. That and the fact that 4 out of the 5 of us were given strange names at birth (all real).

Bass - Jon Hill (only normal name)
Vocals - Brooks Bracken
Drums - Shelby Louis Wall (goes by Louis)
Guitar - Sam Hill (as in what in the Sam Hill)
and last but not least
Keys - Nevada Alpine Kent V (goes by Al, which is short for Alpine)

Can you tell us a little bit about your history, starting with your roots as Ultra Blue?

I don't want to bore you with what schools we went to and such, but yeah, we did go to rival high schools. Two at one, and Three at the other. Sam, Jon, and I have been playing music together since we were about 13 years old. Louis joined when our previous drummer left the band in 2001, and Al joined in 2002 when we decided to make the switch from two guitar players to one guitar and keys. I don't think anyone knew it then, but that was a major moment for us. That's when we really shifted gears and started creating our own sound.

We released a few albums as Ultra Blue, a self titled album (which no one will ever hear), Watercolor, and Maya. We had the most success with our 2004 release Maya, because we really tried to step out and do something musically different. It worked for the most part. In 2006 when we were writing The Inferno, we ran into a few snags with another band with the same name. They're a jazz band based out of New York. Instead of jumping through all of the legal hoops, we decided to use this as an opportunity to start fresh. So we changed the name to King Thief just in time to release The Inferno. And yes, we own the name, so we will never run into that problem again.

What are some of your favorite things about St. Louis' local music scene?

It's weird because we are the perfect band to ask that question to. We've been around for so long and have seen the scene evolve and change, but I think that's why it's so hard to answer. I do like the fact that bands are supporting bands. I see a lot of dudes in bands hanging out, showing up to local shows, and helping spread the word about their St. Louis rock and roll brethren.

Where can we find your albums and see you live?

You can buy our album online through Amazon.com or though iTunes. The best place to buy an album though is at one of our shows. We are playing March 6th at Pop's with some great St. Louis bands. Machree, 12 Summers Old, and Ava Wait. You can check out all of our shows as they are being updated at www.myspace.com/kingthiefmusic

You can listen to King Thief's track "Mahogany" from their CD The Inferno by clicking on the Audio tab, and be sure to check them out at Pop's in a couple of weeks. Their live show is always a blast.

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