What's In A Name? For IV Thieves, There's Plenty

IV Thieves were the brainchild of singer/songwriter Nic Armstrong, and the four-piece Brit-rock band were originally called Nic Armstrong And The Thieves. But given that the frontman duties on the group's new If We Can't Escape My Pretty album are divided between everyone in the band, they decided to get all democratic and shorten the moniker to The Thieves.

However, the name was already taken — bizarrely enough, by a band that shares the same back story: a young British rock band that relocated to the U.S., signed to an indie label and toured the country non-stop.

"We'd been calling ourselves The Thieves before, but we didn't think anybody else was using it," says bassist Shane Lawlor. "And then when we went to change our name to The Thieves for good, which was our intention, we couldn't because it was taken.

"We were like, well, we're The Thieves, so maybe we should just steal the name, right? But we didn't want people buying our album and thinking they're getting theirs, so we just had to call ourselves the IV Thieves. Such a shame, really."

Yet, as mentioned before, the name change ("IV" as in the Roman numerals for four, not the abbreviation for intravenous) wasn't so much for litigious reasons as it was to mark a shift towards band member equality.

"We didn't want to go out as Nic Armstrong And The Thieves anymore, as a singer/songwriter on stage with some guys backing him up," says Lawlor. "We're just not that. So IV Thieves is kind of a statement — a much more democratic moniker."

A change in title seems to be an appropriate move for a band that's already experienced plenty of upheaval, notably a complete relocation from their hometown of Nottingham to the sunny city of Austin, Texas. And if Lawlor's point of view is any indication, there isn't too much they're missing about their rainy homeland.

"I did a D.H. Lawrence," Lawlor sighs. "I'd had enough of England.

"I would not go back. And we all fell in love with Austin, really. We fell in love with the people, and there's also great music there. It's sunny every day, and there's a great quality of life. It's got a real west coast vibe to it, and there's a lot to offer. It just felt right, you know? Like, this is where we could be.

"But we weren't influenced by Austin at all when it came to our music. Even though it was sunny outside, we were writing about drudgery and the working class, a town full of factories, no real hope and no real future. Television adverts, supermarkets, factories, buildings destroyed, shit holes, shit heaps, scumbags, thieves... A lot of it was written about what was going on back home in Nottingham. It's a right shit hole, innit? England's gone to the dogs."

Still, the distance has at least provided the members of IV Thieves with some perspective on the divide between the American and U.K. music scenes, although Lawlor admits that he can't offer too much explanation as to why it's taken North America so long to fall in love with shambolic British rock.

"The whole thing is a complete fucking enigma to me. All I've figured out is to be true to yourself and write the best songs you can, do the best show you can, and write the best record you can. The rest of it's a fuckin' crapshoot."