Published July 31st, 2006 by hrabbach
Vicky Beeching - Yesterday, Today & Forever
The first time I heard of Vicky Beeching was probably around 1999/2000, when she was part of some Vineyard UK recordings both as a songwriter and worship leader. In 2003 she led worship at the Soul Survivor festival and I had the privilege to be there when she helped out on the guitar in the band arrangement workshop. The song we were arranging back then was none other than “Yesterday, Today & Forever”, which was also the first track on her “Shelter” EP that came out the same year.
Now it’s three years later and Vicky has released a full album featuring 11 songs and the title track is, guess what… “Yesterday, Today & Forever”. At first I was a bit disappointed because I had expected it to be full of new songs, but instead she chose to mostly re-record songs that I already knew from the Vineyard recordings and “Shelter”. What an odd decision for a debut album, I thought… until I actually put it into my CD player and started to listen. Now I think I understand. The Vineyard recording of her early days were dominated by… well, Vineyard sound. “Shelter” was a bit of an unpolished gem… lots of potential, but a bit rough around the edges. But now, Vicky has found her own style and been able to record an entire CD of her songs the way they were always meant to be. And the result are stunning new versions of songs I thought I knew so well that there could only be one way to play them.
I really love the way the lyrics play an important role - and what powerful lyrics they are. Unlike many other modern worship CDs, the music doesn’t drown out the lyrics and turn them into a marginality. It feels like first there we only words and the music was created to emphasize them, give them wings, carry them further. Very “God-centered” lyrics, talking about His majesty and mystery… a refreshing change from many “me-centered” worship songs that are published today.
And don’t ever come and tell me that “girls can’t rock” or lead worship - because Vicky can do both and she does it in a very gentle, yet powerful way. It never feels like “too much” and yet it gets your feet moving and your hands clapping before it takes you away to another moment of deep adoration. This would be the perfect worship album, except for one glitch - the re-recording of “Created”, which has lost all the power that it had on “Shelter” and apparently about half the chords with it. But the great songs more than make up for that - the title track itself, “Call to Worship”, “Captivated”, only to name a few. Definitely an album that I will still be listening and singing along to a couple of years from now and one that shouldn’t be missing from any decent worship CD collection.
