Reviewed by Philip Crawley

Michael Card is undoubtedly one of America's most gifted songwriters. This compilation from the "Timeless Classics" series comes with 22 tracks from the early part of Mr. Card's career. The sleeve notes describe his style as "light folk" but it seems only true for the songs you'll know already ("I Have Decided", "Tell The World That Jesus Loves You"). Oddly for a product of Nashville there are occasional resonances of the Baratt Band in a kind of early '80s synth sound meets rockin' good twelve-bar. Occasionally it stays perilously close to Hall & Oates's territory, but the words are top notch in much the same way as Don Francisco paints lyrical pictures that are straight from the Bible. For the most part I enjoyed the songs I didn't know already while his rendition of "El Shaddai" is sufficiently different to stop it sounding like a cover (by the guy who wrote it?). In a way the whole album harks back to a time when a strong lyric and simpler arrangement was important in Christian recordings and although I wouldn't have instinctively gravitated to this kind of album I found it quite refreshing. This stands up well as a collection.

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