The Thieves on Stratton Avenue is Moriah’s first recorded collection of sound.

The album is rooted in a musical core of acoustic guitar, upright bass, and Moriah’s stunning vocal, which is somewhere between Allison Krauss, Norah Jones, and Carol King. Strings, piano, pedal steel, and electric guitar add layers of moody emotional texture around lyrics that are laced with both hope and heaviness. There are subtle but powerful references throughout the album to folk, jazz, classical, and religious music, all four important musical genres in Moriah’s musical journey.

Consider the following snapshots:

Childhood:a whirlwind of Bach inventions and Chopin waltzes, played on an old upright piano in the mountains of West Virginia.

Adolescence: A brief but well meant fury of faith, playing classical violin and leading worship at church and on summer mission trips to Albania and Hungary.

Early adulthood: An entire re-structuring of identity, experimentation over dogma, relativity over absolute truth, improvisation over written music, and the creation and performance of original songs from her heart to express all these growing pains.

Moriah says, “I believe in the power of music as an expression of both emotional resilience and frailty.”

The present snapshot?

Moriah brings these gifts to the table: a haunting angelic voice, a poetic sensibility, and the re-creation of life experience through a sound and voice that is both unique and heart wrenching.