Reviewed by Dave Brassington

Chelsea Moon is one of the new wave of bluegrass artists who will be making her UK debut at this year's Creation Fest in Cornwall. I was a little apprehensive about an album containing so many recorded-to-death country gospel songs but as soon as the music started it immediately grabbed my attention as I was hit by a fresh wall of sound! To begin with Chelsea has a delightful voice, and with the Franz brothers playing some very fine acoustic guitar, mandolin and dobro backing with a little piano from Chelsea and a minimum of bass and percussion, you can almost imagine you are listening to such tunes as "I Love To Tell The Story", "I Need Thee Every Hour" and "What A Friend" for the very first time. Personally I was very glad to hear "What Wondrous Love Is This" again as this magnificent hymn seems to have almost been lost for ages as solely the domain of mountain gospel music. In my opinion it is even better than the more well known "Amazing Grace"! I also take my hat off to Chelsea and friends for transforming Ira Sankey's "Trust And Obey" into something fresh and appealing. On the down side, the rather frenetic version of "A Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go" does not work quite so well, with the tune interspersed with the bluegrass tune "Angeline The Baker". Even though I love dobros, in this case I think they should have stuck more with the fine original tune. But overall, this is an album that could appeal to fans of country music, bluegrass, folk, Americana followers in fact anyone like me who prefers their music to be free of heavy orchestration and connected to a simpler, more rural expression of faith.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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