Reviewed by Gareth Duffield

US producer and owner of Curb records, Mike Curb is a long time veteran of the American music scene and his 'Congregation' are nothing to do with a church but an ensemble of session singers he uses to record easy listening albums. I've no idea whether Mike, or any of the choir, are practising Christians but here they offer predictably slick MOR versions of American hymnody. The cover of this album conjures up images of a scene from the American film The Preachers Wife and many of the hymns have a Christmas feel to them. If you want to go back to the roots of the great hymn writers then '50 Classic Hymns' certainly does that. But this album does resemble a production out of the early '90s rather than 2007. Unless you are picking out a certain track, listening to the whole album gets quite predictable very quickly. And despite accompanied by an obviously vast orchestra the similar tempo and arrangements of each hymn ensure that they get very repetitive.

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