IV Thieves

Suddenly presented with a record contract after his girlfriend forwarded a tape of his material to a magazine without his awareness, singer/songwriter and guitarist Nic Armstrong set about assembling musicians to cut a full-length album and handle live dates. Recruiting drummer Jonny Aitken, bassist Shane Lawlor, and guitarist Glynn Wedgewood from the Nottingham, England area where he was then based, Armstrong issued the resulting record, The Greatest White Liar, on One Little Indian in mid-2004 under his solo name. When the 1960s British blues-influenced album reached American outlets twelve months later, the billing had shifted to Nic Armstrong & the Thieves. On the ensuing tour the lineup quickly evolved into a collective of songwriters and vocalists rather than a vehicle for Armstrong alone. While crisscrossing stages in both the United States and the United Kingdom with Oasis, Jet, Razorlight, the Ravonettes, and others, the quartet adopted the permanent name IV Thieves. The four Brits not only appeared at 2005’s SXSW Festival in Austin, TX, but soon relocated there, where they began writing their first proper album under the new moniker. Emerging from the studio with the Oasis-like guitar rock of If We Can’t Escape My Pretty, they resumed road work, including U.S. shows alongside the Pretenders. Extensive acclaim across blogs and print preceded the album’s fall 2006 release on New West Records, by which point Elliott Frazier had taken over on drums.