I mentioned the new group Love and Theft in the Country Corral on August 22.  I finally received my copy of the CD this week!  I sat down and gave it a listen.  Here is what I think of the songs on the disc. I’m more of a lyrics person, so the strength of lyrics has a lot of weight on the ratings.

Cheris Song  
World Wide Open Not a bad song, per se, but probably not the best song to put in the #1 track of a debut album.  Theme of the song is which road to travel down (which life choice to make).
Runaway I absolutely LOVE this song.  I haven’t been able to get it out of my head for weeks.  From a lyrics perspective, I’m a sucker for the “get out of town and make a new life for myself”.  The harmonies and instrumental strength really make the song stand out.  My scale only goes up to 5, but I wanted to give this song at least a 6.
Dancing in Circles The songs asks why people can’t get along, when we are all born brothers and sisters (in Christ).
It’s Up to You The narrator is warning a second person that their destructive actions are likely to cause broken friendships in near future.
You To Miss This is a story of love lost.  It doesn’t seem to have the instrumental strength of some of the other songs.
Can’t Go Back Another song with strong instrumental aspects and harmonies.
Don’t Wake Me A tale of newfound love – don’t wake me from the dream.
Freedom The first half of the song is considerably better than the second half (which is still pretty good).  Is freedom a good thing or a bad thing?
Slow Down In contrast to the songs which have the narrator racing off into new directions (Runaway and World Wide Open), this song begs to slow things down a bit.
Me Without You A solid song with the theme of “you complete me”
Drowning The songs has the theme of “I’m drowning without you”.  I really like some of the harmonies – they pushing the song’s rating up by a full Cheri.
Album grade: This album has a number of 2 Cheri and 3 Cheri songs.  However, I really like the top end songs (particularly Runaway) and the fact that this is a debut album make me a bit of an easier grader and allows me to award 4 Cheris.  I see a lot of upside potential for this group.  Perhaps their next album will be achieve a coveted 5 Cheri rating.

Love and Theft is made up of Brian Bandas, Eric Gunderson, and Stephen Barker Liles.

Love and Theft
World Wide Open