Reviewed by Tom Lennie

 Maybe I'm naïve, but I truly expected a 'New Song' album to be just that - a collection of new songs. Therefore I was quite surprised to discover how many of these songs I already knew - Paul Oakley's 'Who Is There Like You' from ;95; Robin Mark's 'Jesus, All For Jesus' from '91 etc; There's a beautiful arrangement too of the hymn 'Before The Throne of God Above'. Then there's a problem with session recordings like this in that they tend to sound rather sterile. Beautiful voices, good instrumentation, but lacking that spark of vitality that worship leaders' original albums often possess. This is most noticeable on the two brilliant songs taken from Vineyard UK's 'Come, Now Is The Time'. Compared to Vineyard, the versions sound quite flat. Likewise, who can perform a Darlene Zschech song ("Standing In Your Presence') with anything like the passion that Ms Zschech exudes herself? These are 12 good songs, intended mainly as a local church worship resource. But why don't worship leaders just buy the 88-song Praise '99 Music Book instead? And if you want to hear the songs on record, you'd be far better off buying (if you haven't already) one or two of the albums that these songs originally appear on.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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