STYLE: Pop RATING OUR PRODUCT CODE: 120393-19293 LABEL: Elevation ELE1730D FORMAT: CD Album ITEMS: 2 RELEASE DATE: 2012-03-31 RRP: £4.99
Reviewed by Doug Holland
This two-CD offering (22 tracks, providing 55 minutes of music) is a studio recording chosen to represent the 2012 Spring Harvest Song Book. The first disc of 12 tracks is given the full-band treatment while the second one is stripped back considerably for more of an acoustic-set feel. The songs are all accessible, hooky and well structured and features some which are already well known (Matt Redman's "10,000 Reasons" and Vicky Beeching's "Break Our Hearts" alongside the usual hymn, Nathan Fellingham's updating of Charles Wesley's "And Can It Be"). Other well known songsmiths on this set include Britain's Tim Hughes and Nigel Briggs and America's Israel Houghton and Jeremy Riddle. The vocalists featured here include Cathy Burton, Quin Delport and Nicki Rogers and production by Dan Wheeler is pretty good. What does become a point of conjecture, though, to longstanding listeners of modern worship albums is precisely where the "fresh" element can be found. Many of the lyrical phrases and ideas in evidence will be extremely familiar to listeners of previous similar collections, and likewise with the structures and delivery of the songs, which offer little not heard many times before. It may be that it is a deliberate policy on the part of the contributors and producers to stick with what is known to work; however, if this is not the case, then more worrying than just the lack of newness in the songs themselves is the apparent lack of development in insight and wisdom on the part of our leading writers which this could indicate.
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Product Description
22 new songs for the Church. Spring Harvest New Songs 2012 offers fresh and inspiring ways for churches and individuals to respond in worship.
It is the desire to continue to resource the church with new expressions of worship that's at the heart of the Spring Harvest music range. This double CD album features 22 songs carefully chosen as the most inspiring to emerge this year.