Reviewed by Ian Hayter This three CD set contains three hours of music, or to put it another way, one hundred songs from the library hymn books and Sunday School songsheets of the Victorian church. American producer Stephen Elkins has brought together a choir of children and a small selection of backing musicians to produce this lengthy selection of songs ranging from classics such as "Onward Christian Soldiers", "Are You Washed In The Blood" (which surely would be a bemusing item to set before today's children) and "Stand Up, Stand Up For Jesus" to more recent (but still not very recent) choruses, which many listeners may remember from 1960s beach missions and Sunday School halls - "I Will Make You Fishers Of Men", "I've Got A Mansion" and "Wide, Wide As The Ocean". The children sing as if they've been locked in the studio and told they can't come out until the album's finished, and the backing music is unimaginative and pedestrian, played mainly on cheap electronic instruments, it seems (although a plaintive harmonica breaks in from time to time, and I think I heard a fiddle). There is an occasional key change, which seems to take the singers by surprise, and the odd variation in tempo, but other than that, the music is beyond boring. I'm not sure who the target audience are, but I suspect this will appeal only to people who are trying to demonstrate to their grandchildren what church was like 60 years ago.
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