“Some people just make great music and sometimes you just don’t know why. I felt like that when I heard Steve Forbert for the first time. I felt like that when I heard Gene Clark and Richie Havens for the first time. And I felt like it when I heard Thieves of Time. These are timeless love stories from up country: barroom tales, lovestruck tunes, lovesick and smoky ballads by the fireside, sung in rich harmonies. The sound is warm and full of guitar and mandolin. Every now and then, there are moments of slide and pedal steel, piano, bass and drums. But always the sun and the rain, and then the break in clouds. That’s the space where these songs are at. “If you need signposts to their sound, maybe you would head to the west coast of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young or to the Cat Stevens songbook. Christian’s vocal is his own, but there are tones of the great Tim Hardin and even Bert Sommer. Add Phil’s plaintive harmony and you might think of the Finn brothers. The beauty of the thing here is you’ve heard this sound before, but you can’t place it exactly. And what’s more, it doesn’t matter – you’re just pleased to be here because it makes you feel good and it makes you connect with the good times and the sad times too. You can laugh and cry, and by the end of the night you’ll be singing those tunes all the way home”. Ben Gunstone - 2016