Reviewed by Doug Holland

This is the first CD released by the Kingdom Vineyard church of St Andrews, Scotland. It comprises nine tracks which total approximately 50 minutes and it is home-grown in content, performance and production. The song genre is predominantly soft pop, with a piano and electric or acoustic guitar sharing the majority of the lead roles but with effective contributions from a variety of orchestral instruments. The vocals are extremely accomplished and some delightful lead voices are evident, with these supported by plenty of well chosen, placed and delivered harmonies. The production values are clear and crisp and good use is made of space in the music. The majority of songs are unexceptional however, with the modern trend of "massive statement going completely undeveloped and unexplained" being dominant. Also (and again not untypically in modern Christian recordings), the subject of the majority of the songs here is the singer rather than God, which waters down the sense of "worship" in the listening experience. Interestingly, probably the best song in the collection is another re-working of Psalm 23 called "Green Pastures" and this song may well out-live the rest of the album. There is clearly a great deal of talent associated with the Kingdom Vineyard, and hopefully subsequent offerings will suggest more of a desire for self expression rather than slotting so generically into the current trends of modern worship.

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