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Chris Tomlin “Adore: Christmas Songs of Worship” Album Review

Chris Tomlin's Adore: Christmas Songs of Worship is the go to album as far as congregational worship over the festive season is concerned. Though the market is saturated with seasonal outputs every year and though it's almost mandatory for every artist to release a Christmas album somewhere along his/her career, few are the Christmas songs made for congregational worship.
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Rend Collective “Campfire Christmas Vol. 1” Album Review

If Momford and Sons have first cousins in contemporary Christian music they would be Rend Collective. Rend Collective brings to the Christian music genre a raw streak of rootsy Americana that borrows the expressiveness of neo-hippie rock and the rustic folk of Guy Clark & Emmylou Harris; music that is far more gritty, organic, and raw than vast swath of today's country music.
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Donna Ulisse “Hard Cry Moon” Album Review

Listening to Donna Ulisse's new album "Hard Cry Moon" is like stepping into a 3-D diary. As soon as the music starts with "Black Train," we find ourselves waiting by the railway tracks with a forlorn wife bidding farewell to her erring husband, leaving behind the lights of home to begin life again in another zip code. Then we get to step into the thrilling pages of a blossoming romance ("We're Gonna Find a Preacher") and then spend an idyllic afternoon sitting under the shade of Papa's tree ("Papa's Garden").
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MercyMe “MercyMe, It’s Christmas!” Album Review

It's a challenge for one to get forty winks while listening to MercyMe's latest festive release MercyMe, It's Christmas. On their first Christmas album in a decade, MercyMe has creative enmeshed a cacophony of sounds to make this one of their most engaging records to date
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Hillsong Worship “OPEN HEAVEN/River Wild” Album Review

Hillsong Worship's brand new album stylized as "OPEN HEAVEN/River Wild" fills a lacuna current in today's canon of worship music: songs that are made for God's throne room. Ask Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jesus, the Apostle Paul, and the Apostle John about the secret of their longevity and tenacity of their ministries, they would all agree that it's because each of them has seen God in his exalted throne.
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Various Artists “Blessed Assurance: The New Hymns of Fanny Crosby” Album Review

Born in Putnam County, New York, Fanny Crosby became ill within two months. Unfortunately, the family doctor was away, and another man-pretending to be a certified doctor-treated her by prescribing hot mustard poultices to be applied to her eyes. Her illness eventually relented, but the treatment left her blind. When the doctor was revealed to be a quack, he disappeared.
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Mark Lowry “How We Love” Album Review

Pharrell Williams, Loretta Lynn, and Beth Nielsen Chapman are not names you would expect to find listed conterminously on a CD sleeve. It takes someone as ingenious as the genre-bending Mark Lowry to festoon the works of these diverse writers together and make them his very own.
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Carolyn Arends “Just Getting Started: An Acoustic Reflection on 20 Years of Music” Album Review

In a recent interview with Hallels, Arends elucidated that there are two kinds of singers: the first are the Levites. Biblically, they are the ones responsible for the worship of God for all of Israel. In today's vernacular, they would be our equivalent of Hillsong Worship, Bethel Music, Darlene Zschech, Matt Redman and the like, artists given over to serving the church in her corporate worship. Then, there are the prophets; they are the ones called to speak God's profound truth to our society from God's perspective. Arends finds herself in the latter category.
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Andrew Peterson “The Burning Edge of Dawn” Album Review

Like a tantalizing meal that lingers with its rich aromatic flavours long after you have finished your last bite, the songs of Peterson lingers. They haunt. They disturb. They comfort.
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Paul Baloche “Christmas Worship Vol. 2” Album Review

Baloche solved a conundrum worship leaders face perennially each Christmas: should the church restrict its repertoire to the Christmas carols or carry on with the usual set list of worship songs? Part of the reason why many worship pastors are reticent in tackling the traditional carols is that they lack the usage of the personal pronoun in addressing the Almighty. As a result, many of the yuletide hymns are more like songs about God rather than to God.
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