Company Of Thieves

Company of Thieves have created the musical equivalent of an enigmatic friend. Difficult to connect with, scatty and impossible to pin down, Ordinary Riches is illogical and not easy to enjoy. Every song appears to belong to a different genre, from indie pop to almost folk, as if the music has different personalities. On opening track "Old Letters," Genevieve Schatz's voice reaches the shuddering peak of a tortured persona, yet the instrumentation limps sadly behind, leaving the vocals without enough support to make it epic. The following song is jaunty and free of real drama. The album runs the gamut of human moods, and the seemingly arbitrary order echoes the mood swings of an unstable young adult. Maybe it's the tone of Genevieve's voice, or the loss of depth in production that comes from making everyone's contribution equal, but each song has an ominous atmosphere, even the more upbeat ones. Perhaps Ordinary Riches is an accidentally honest, human album - seemingly accessible but forever out of your grasp, like an enigmatic lover, frustrating, yet addictively so.