Not completely Satisfied
Posted May 10, 2008
By Nathan,
The first single, love is here", off of Tenth Avenue North's new album is getting steady radio play already. Over and Underneath is a relatively quick release after the light rock worships bands last project Don't look back. On the surface the new one has skillful song writing and great soft music to back it up.
The opening song and single "love is here" doesn't challenge much in terms of music, as it's only a soft worship song. While "lift us up" is a decent upbeat light rock song, "by your side" has far more inspiring music to go along with it. Tenth Avenue North doesn't do much rock with "Let it go", but they send their hardest rock song comes in the form of "break me down", unfortunately with the worship angle on the song, the rock is not really convincing.
The emotional "hold my heart" is heavily helped by the light music and a good bridge. "Times" is run by an acoustic guitar and the song is strange because this type of ballad is usually the song that gets saved for the end of an album. The light pop tune of "beloved" is not really impressive, and although "you are" speeds up as the song goes on, but the trend of the light rock tunes without much difference is annoying. "Satisfy" is a light rock worship song and the albums finishes with worship track "hallelujah".
Behind the emotionally powerful music lie the lyrics that they cover. "love is here" has a nice salvation chorus but fumbles with the line ('come to the Father/you who work/and you will work no more'). The theme of the album must be going back to God since that's the way track one, two and three are constructed with a few small lyrical differences. "Hold my heart" and "times" both have a very emotional feel to them, but rearrange the songs music and it leaves you with messages that have been said time and again. The song "Beloved" can have two meanings: either Gods love for man or a slandered girl/guy love song, so take your pick.
The messages of two of Natalie Grants biggest hits ("held" and "in better hand") are fairly simple but are propelled by soft heart string tugging music, much of that can be said of Tenth Avenue North. Give credit to lead singer Mike Donehey for pulling ordinary songs into what appears to be an arsenal of hits out of decent and repetitive lyrics messages. Overall Over rand Underneath has a strong first half but when it comes to the many basic worship tunes like "satisfy" saying 'you're all I want/you're all I need' it also says 'haven't I heard this before?'.
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