Reviewed by Matthew Cordle

Steve is the worship director at James River Assembly in Missouri. He has an attractive, mellow-sounding voice with good intonation and an emotive style of singing. His songs are well crafted and produced, with thoughtful arrangements that allow the energy level to flow with the lyrics, despite the loudness maximising being caned a bit much on some tracks. The performances are solid and much of the drumming is characterised by syncopated, off-beat patterns that add an interesting overall musical flavour. There are some nice creative touches in the mix like the drums panning on "Waiting", although the vocals are at times drowned out by the instrumentation instead of riding on top and I'd also suggest it's a little bass-light overall. Thematically there's a lot of celebration of the fact that God sees us as worth saving when no-one else would. Highlights are "Send Your Light", a poignant-sounding prayer for God to flood us with his living water, light and truth; "The Day", a gently uplifting celebration of "the day you came to me"; "You See Hope In Me", a punchy, upbeat anthem on God's seeing of potential in us where no-one else does; and "Waiting", with a similar theme of "I'm a child of the King/I'm nothing in this world, but to You I'm everything," the strings providing an effective lift and the stripping back to acoustic guitar and vocal to end works really well. I'd also highlight the particularly sweet vocal lines in verse two of "House Of Secrets". In summary, a good debut demonstrating considerable musicality.

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