Archive for the 'Reviews' Category
When I was in England last week, I picked up a copy of this year’s Soul Survivor live CD. Unfortunately I didn’t have the opportunity to go there myself this year, it’s an event I very much enjoyed last year, but the timing this year just didn’t work out. Anyway, “Love Came Down” is the traditional music CD recorded at this event and this time it leaves me with a rather mixed feeling.
There are a number of new songs on it that I’m sure I will enjoy not just listening to, but also singing and playing with the band I happen to lead. But as an album, this year it feels a bit too polished and seems to have lost some of the “live” feel that the previous Soul Survivor recordings had. The fact that for the first time, they saw the need to record overdubs in a studio, may well be part of the reason for that.
Worship leaders this time are Tim Hughes (well known from previous recordings and a lot of songs he wrote), Lex Buckley and Ben Cantelon - it’s nice to hear a few fresh voices. I really like the new songs - “Celebrate” and “Join With The Angels” really stand out for me. When I saw that “Saviour” was a version of Tim Hughes’s “When Silence Falls” together with 29th Chapter, I thought it was an accident just waiting to happen, but it is in fact a lot nicer than I thought it would be. And of course, a lot of what’s special about Soul Survivor is in the spontaneous songs, one of which is also the last track on the CD - too bad I had to wait this long for a glimpse at the live atmosphere.
Can I recommend it? Sure I can, otherwise I think I wouldn’t be writing about it. Just don’t expect too much live atmosphere and you will get a great CD with a number of new songs and some good recordings of old ones. And a good laugh when you listen closely to Ben Cantelon’s version of “From The Inside Out” and realize that every time, he sings “you glory goes beyond all phase” instead of “all fame”… if you can make sense of it, let me know. I wonder why they didn’t fix that when they did the overdubs…
Technorati : Ben Cantelon, Lex Buckley, Love Came Down, Soul Survivor, Tim Hughes, christian, live, music, worship
Since I classify a lot of CDs as “the best I’ve bought in the last 10 years”, you should probably take this review with a grain of salt. But seriously, “Good Monsters”, the new Jars of Clay album, is the best CD I’ve bought in the last 10 years. Or maybe I’ve just forgotten about all the other great CDs I bought in the last 10 years. Anyway, I guess you can tell that I’m excited about this one. First of all because it’s a “real” Jars of Clay CD again, with all (well, except one) original songs - and second of all because it’s not like any other Jars of Clay CD I’ve heard before.
Listening to the first track, I was stunned. Where was the typical Jars of Clay sound, the percussions, the banjo…? If it wasn’t for Dan Haseltine’s characteristic voice, I might have thought I’d put the wrong CD in the player. But the surprise wasn’t at all negative - “Work” is just a much rockier song than what I would have expected. In fact, the first three songs don’t sound much like the typical Jars of Clay material of previous releases… which is great because it shows the band isn’t so set in its ways that they can’t develop their style anymore. But don’t worry; if you liked their trademark sounds, there’s enough of them on the CD as well - 12 tracks and more than 50 minutes is more than you get on most recordings nowadays.
The rockier tracks at the beginning of the CD are not the only surprise, though. The lyrics are the other big surprise. The lyrical depth is remarkable and these are probably the most honest lyrics in the whole CCM scene, matched only by Casting Crowns in their critical view of church and christian exclusivism. You can be sure to see some of those lyrics featured in one of the “think about…” articles here later this year. “Good Monsters”, “Oh my God” and “Surprise” seem to be good candidates for that.
It’s hard to try and name my favorite tracks, but I’ll try anyway. “Oh my God” stands out, kind of in a league of its own. “Surprise” is great, as are “Work” and “Mirrors and Smoke” (the latter featuring former “Sixpence None The Richer” singer Leigh Nash). Actually, the rest is great as well… not a single disappointment on the entire album. No wonder CCM Magazine gave it the first A+ rating in years…
Technorati : Good Monsters, Jars of Clay, ccm, christian music, lyrics, music, review, rock
First, an open admission: when I first listened to Brian Littrell’s solo debut “Welcome Home”, I was very disappointed. I was expecting something else than what I got and that’s mainly CCM Magazine’s fault - their review of the album wrote of Brian Littrell as something like “the legitimate successor to Michael W. Smith and Steven Curtis Chapman”… so I was expecting music similar to that of these artists. Well, it is not. And I’m also not sure if Littrell is as gifted a songwriter as those two. But after putting the CD to the bottom of my stack of new CDs and waiting a few weeks, I decided to have another go and forget about what my expectations were when I first bought it.
And it gets a lot better if you don’t compare it to something it doesn’t compare well to. The second time, I actually started to like the album a lot. Littrell’s voice is very nice indeed (if some girl had ever forced you to watch a Backstreet Boys a-capella session on MTV in the late 90s, you would have already known that), although at times he can’t seem to resist the temptation to overdo it a little and comes across as showing off… but he has the voice for it, so I guess he can be forgiven. And if I had any doubts how explicitly christian the lyrics of his songs would be, well I must say he’s doing pretty well on that, too.
Unfortunately, but that’s of course my personal feeling, the best songs are the ones that he didn’t write himself - and that’s also why he’s not another MWS or SCC. My personal favorite is the wonderfully weird “Angels and Heroes” with its rhythmically interesting harmonies - “Wish” is a close runner-up with lyrics that I’m relatively sure I’ll use for an article for the “Think About…” category some day. Where the album clearly fails, in my opinion, is when Littrell tries to incorporate gospel elements into the songs. What some artists have turned into an art form feels a bit silly and awkward on this one. Overall, it’s a bit of a mixed bag - some excellent songs and some that I usually skip. Maybe it’s best to listen before you buy, so you can figure out if this one’s for you.
Technorati : Backstreet Boys, Brian Littrell, CCM, CD, christian, music, review
So many releases in the CCM market these days are very similar sounding, very mainstream. It’s refreshing to every now end then hold a real gem in my hands - and Shawn McDonald’s sophomore studio album “Ripen” definitely is such a gem. I must admit I already like his debut “Simply Nothing” a lot and now this one is even better.
This is definitely not an album that you can just pop into your CD player and then expect to keep running in the background as some kind of easy-listening backdrop to whatever else you’re doing. The music is far too good for that… it really manages to combine simplicity with complexity, as weird as that may sound. I love the interesting mix of instruments - heavy on acoustic guitar and cello with some extravagant percussion thrown in here and there. And the lyrics go deeper than on many other productions - I’ve rarely seen such authenticity in modern songwriting. So do expect quite a few rather meditative songs, both musically and lyrically - but in the tradition of singer-songwriters from days seemingly gone by, there are also a few beautifully told little stories.
Usually I try to pick a favorite song… that’s very difficult with this album. For me it works more as a collection than as single songs. So… no favorites today, maybe next time. But if you’ve got an hour (or slightly less), maybe this one’s for you.
Technorati : Ripen, Shawn McDonald, ccm, christian, music, review
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.
Technorati : Survivor, Vicky Beeching, Vineyard, christian, music, review, worship
