Bold Right Life
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Kierra Audiences have literally watched Kierra Sheard grow up in the spotlight, though now that the singer’s out of her teens and approaching womanhood, she’s making noticeable strides at more mature sounding...
Hail To The King
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Hillsong London In just over 10 years Hillsong London has grown from 100 congregants to well over 6,000. And considering the mass market modern worship contributions its sister church, Australia’s Sydney-based mega congregation,...
Christmas Songs
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Fernando Before his major label debut in 1997, Fernando Ortega recorded a variety of albums independently, utilizing mainly acoustic instruments and understated arrangements to capture the simple beauty of hymns...
MUSICAL POSTCARD ART FROM A SINGER/SONGWRITER OF SUBSTANCE | Posted September-24-2008
Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a notorious gospel singer of the 1930s and ’40s, sang her songs of God’s love-light in the darkened nightclubs of her day. In the song “Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us”—covered by Robert Plant and Allison Krauss on their monumental duet album, Raising Sand, and sung here by the author—Sam Phillips invites consideration of the nature of her work since leaving behind her birth name and a career in “Contemporary Christian Music.” Like generations gone before, Rosetta and Phillips have heard a word in music “above my head,” which is “echoes of light that shine like stars after they’re gone.”
The seventh album from Sam Phillips (eleventh if you count the four as Leslie), it’s her first outing as artist and producer. Now divorced from T-Bone Burnett who has been associated with her since her much-lauded “ccm” swan song The Turning, Phillips continues to make stark, focused pop reflections on the complexity of modern existence. And not surprisingly, she seems focused here, as she was on ’04s A Boot and a Shoe, on unrequited love and the search for meaning amid the frustrations and distractions that mark our troubled lives.
“Little Plastic Life” offers an incisive exposé on lives drenched with Madison Avenue’s superficial commerciality, and the music is appropriately, stunningly bright and vapid. Often, Phillips’ tightly wound, cryptic lyrical expressions suggest a haiku that will unfold with infinite layers of meaning over time. Somewhat obsessed with love’s undoing, she asks, “Did you ever love me?” in “Another Song,” and acknowledges that someone is “the chemical that never did wear off” in “My Career in Chemistry.” In the title track, she attempts to control the ‘beloved’: “I love you when you don’t go, when you don’t hide, when you don’t do anything.” Or maybe she’s so in love that she can accept it all, even unresponsiveness and nothingness.
In the end, like Sister Rosetta, Sam Phillips’ music is about finding light in dark places, and vice versa. In “Watching Out of This World” she sings of slipping past the screen, beyond the obvious, below the surface to “The splendor/The holiness of life/That reveals itself/Converting blind fate into destiny.” As a mainstream artist, Phillips’ songs rarely drift too far from her foundational, existential interest in things spiritual, while avoiding simplistic categories, labels and catchphrases. Her postcard length missives from the edge seem to capture a one-sided conversation with the Divine Lover, or perhaps an all too human one. Thus, they hold our interest and demand our attention, as real art always does. –Brian Quincy Newcomb
This review has been reprinted on NRT with permission from Christian Music Planet. Click here to visit ChristianMusicPlanet.com today!
BROUWER SHOWS SONGWRITING CHOPS | Posted September-24-2008
The new album from Matt Brouwer is different from his 2001 major label debut, Imagerical (Reunion), a pop/rock worship album. It even shows a slight departure from his last full-length indie project, the alt/rock/country Unlearning. But even where previous efforts led Brouwer in different directions, it sounds as if those roads led more or less to Where’s Our Revolution, a collection of pop/rock songs with some Texas/country flavor, masterminded by awar d-winning producer Michael Omartian (4HIM, Vince Gill).
Highlights include the melancholy opener “Come Back Around,” the exultant “Beautiful Now” and addictive pop tunes “Sometimes” and “Please Say.” Guest vocals by Amy Grant and Vince Gill on “The Other Side” add comforting tones to a song of sad but hopeful loss. Brouwer poses questions of consequence, acceptance and faith in community in the title track and “Running to Begin.” After all the roads traveled, Brouwer thinks fondly of home in “Writing to Remember.”
Brouwer hasn’t simply reinvented himself. Instead, it seems he has tapped into the songwriter within. This is Brouwer’s best work to date. The songs have greater depth and wider scope. Where’s Our Revolution is an album of pop hits and spiritual moments, musings of home and longings for relationship. These songs are filled with daring hope, brilliant dreams and tender love. –Jackie A. Chapman
This review has been reprinted on NRT with permission from Christian Music Planet. Click here to visit ChristianMusicPlanet.com today!
SAMOAN SIBLINGS FUSE WORSHIP AND POP/ROCK ON SUMMER RELEASE | Posted September-24-2008
In the past 10 years, John, Jesse, James, Sam and Joe Katina have rarely taken a day off. Besides releasing a small catalog of popular records, a best-selling live worship album, one Christmas collection and a best-of compilation, the uber-talented brothers remain onstage staples for several Christian music luminaries including Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith.
And now, for the first time since signing with Gotee Records in 1999, the fab five release an entirely independent project, Still. Steadily working through 10 tracks that tribute both the corporate worship element of 2002’s Lifestyle and the rock influence of 2003’s Roots, the band of brothers coalesce a cohesive pop/rock collection.
“Because,” “Alive” and “Free” specifically purport this assertion, merging lyrics easy enough for any congregation to sing with a modern rock sound of huge proportions.
Groove-centered “My Friend” works well, with the brothers’ fluid vocals lying back over a vintage Gavin DeGraw-esque pocket.
“Praise,” the album’s brightest proposition, advances with hard hits and tight grooves that create a contagious blend of band and vocals. In fact, the track would not be out of place on a live Black Gospel record, hinting at what the Katina boys are capable of musically.
Originally recorded for Roots, the album closer (and title track) is a subtle benediction. Indeed, after listening to the sensitive recording, one wonders why the band doesn’t spend more time pursuing this simpler side, creating more tracks with ample space for its beautiful vocal design.
Still is not a bad record. The Katinas’ latest offers enough solid pop and enough ensemble musicianship that little needs proving to make the CD a more than legit purchase. It’s just not entirely the record you wait for five guys this talented to release. –Andrew Greer
This review has been reprinted on NRT with permission from Christian Music Planet. Click here to visit ChristianMusicPlanet.com today!
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