Robbers On High Street: Grand Animals

The heap of ingredients The Kinks left behind always seems to topple over on the bands that try to pick through it. "Across Your Knee," the opening track on Robbers' On High Street's second album, bets on listeners' remaining affection for guitar-piano back-and-forth and "tee-hee-hee" harmonies, until the lyric clears a wormhole through the clatter ("I'll meet you in the womb"). Ben Trokan's fractured narratives get the space they need to keep this from becoming a Britpop mudslide—"The Ramp" thrives on a bare piano line and the story of a dying boy who gets a "photo-op and a hug" from Leonardo DiCaprio. Robbers' assortment of tidbits at first sounded like something to mature past; Grand Animals suggests it's worth growing into.