"Meghan Kylie’s debut album Thief is a densely-layered, melodic, and theme-driven LP. It’s diverse in emotional expression, tempo, and arrangement, ranging from songs that feature a full band and skew more punk in their vibe to pure choral cantations that evoke the deepest nave of a soaring church. Thematically, the album takes you on a journey of emotional processing—a search for validation, for okayness, and an exploration and rejection of the ways in which we are simultaneously made to feel too much and not enough within the paradigms of patriarchy and capitalism. While offering a satisfying conclusion, it refuses to put a tidy bow on the subjects it discusses, because there are some questions we may never stop asking ourselves.

 

The album frequently features tightly-woven harmonies in careful arrangement—chills guaranteed. Vocally, Kylie is a force to be reckoned with. In “Gratitude,” the album starts off with her speaking voice, which in itself is more melodious than many people’s singing voices, as she invites us into the album as an experience of mutual gratitude and appreciation that she and listeners will share. “Thoughts in the Dark” brings in Kylie’s choral roots, with vibrant production that calls to mind a holy space where music can facilitate the deepest healing as she asks one of the albums central questions: “will I ever be alright?” 

 

In the title track “Thief,” we see the soaring highs she can reach as she plaintively questions if it is, or will always feel like, thievery to attempt to do more than meet your basic needs, to refuse to be smaller than you really are, and to refuse or be unable to meet the demands others place on you, whether rational or irrational. “Broken” showcases the bedrock of her range’s lower end in a melodic choral post-breakup anthem with a goosebump-inducing drone-note at its base. “The Pen,” is powerful medicine, fully choral with no instrumentation, promising that we, the listeners, will move on from the hardest moment we will ever face—highlighted with vocal-rounding chants that this is something we experience not once or linearly but rather cyclically throughout life. 

 

Other highlights include “Trainwreck,” where instrumentals with a garage-rock flair surround Kylie’s signature melodies as she explores the obstacle of the human body and mind as we try and often fail to complete the improbable expectations set out for us both by others and ourselves. “My mind is a trainwreck, my body’s a trainwreck,” Kylie sings. Same, bestie. “Validation” both questions and asserts Kylie’s right to seek, to seek validation, to exist outside of the control of another, and to speak without interruption. Thief’s lead single “I Can Be Angry, Too!” takes this further, unapologetically pushing back against abuse and gaslighting on an interpersonal level, and against society’s expectations that femme emotions should be small, quiet, and soft at a broader level. 

Thief underscores how difficult it is to write about music in a way that adequately captures its experiential nature. This album so clearly and powerfully articulates its own questions and needs that it almost feels like talking over Thief to write about it, so go listen to it for yourself. And remember, as Kylie says: you’re gonna love your life again."