Thieves (band)

David McAlmont (born David Irving McAlmont, 2 May 1967, Croydon, England[1]), 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".

The outspoken and photogenic McAlmont became a minor celebrity on the London indie scene, while the quieter Freeman took more of a smaller role in interviews and concentrated more heavily on Thieves' multi-layered and complex musical arrangements with producer/engineer Michael J. Ade.

In 1992 Thieves signed to the tiny Nursery Records label, on which they released their debut single. "Through the Door" (on which Freeman's Cocteau Twins influences dominated) won the Single of the Week award in Melody Maker and gained sufficient interest for Thieves to move up to Nursery's parent company, Hut Recordings (itself a subsidiary of Virgin Records).

Later in the year, the first Hut release – Thieves' second single "Unworthy" – showed the duo moving in a much more pop-orientated direction. With more obvious soul influences (having some melodic and atmospheric similarities to Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On"), it also sampled dialogue from a variety of additional pop culture touchstones including Torch Song Trilogy and Thirtysomething. Like its predecessor, it became a Melody Maker Single of the Week.

The band's next step was to play as support act to Morrissey on the latter's British tour, helping them to build a new audience.

Once legal matters with Freeman had been cleared up, Hut Recordings were left with the completed Thieves recordings. As David McAlmont was comparatively celebrated in indie circles (while Freeman had had less of a presence in publicity and interviews) it was decided that these recordings would be released under the project name of "McAlmont" to further McAlmont's career. A third single, "Either", was the first formal McAlmont release.

The Thieves album was released as the eponymous McAlmont album in 1994, with Saul Freeman's instrumental and songwriting contributions fully credited but with all artwork featuring McAlmont alone. The album contained two of the three singles – "Either" and "Unworthy" – plus the "Unworthy" B-side "They Hide" and a cover of Joni Mitchell's "Conversation", but did not contain any of the material from the "Through The Door" EP (Some of the "Through The Door" material was contained on a limited-edition second CD enclosed with early versions of the album).

McAlmont was well received by those critics who reviewed it, but the delay (and the loss of the Thieves brand name) had already stalled its momentum. It did not sell well or make a public breakthrough.