Reviewed by Tony Cummings

I can think of few groups who transcend the dimension of personal taste for me as completely as Vinesong. For those who don't know this itinerant bunch of worship ministers who travel the world under the leadership of South African John Watson, let me explain that Vinesong's music is hugely middle of the road, an anonymous blend of voices whose mix of unison and harmonies with the kind of stilted jolliness once heard on the Black & White Minstrel TV shows of old and which give the words "bland" and "cheesy" a bad name. And yet. And yet. Vinesong, both in performance and in John Watson's material, carry an anointing that many better, and hipper, musical aggregations can only dream about. I don't understand it. I just know the 15 songs here, compiled in three sections - For The Body, For The Soul and For The Spirit - get through to a lover of cool music like me in ways I can't explain other than it's God. (As I write this those anonymous voices are singing "Oh what a miracle" .precisely!) The song I find most affecting is the closing "In The Stillness". Maybe you won't get it. But maybe, like me, you'll find that something that exists outside the Good Art/Bad Art debate. "In the stillness you're near/In the quiet you speak." Indeed. And may I add our Lord also speaks in the words and music of the Vinesong journeymen.

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