Passion - Salvation's Tide Is Rising (2016)

Some of you might be wondering what I'm doing reviewing a Passion album. In some of my previous posts, I've pointed out that I am not a fan of live worship albums, and that's all that Passion does. Granted, they do it better than almost anyone on an annual basis, but their releases are generally pretty similar year to year. If you've heard one, you've heard them all.

Apparently, not anymore.

When they released this online on January 1, I thought to myself, "That's weird: Passion 2016 hasn't even happened yet. There's no way they have a live album ready yet."

Well, that's because it's not live: this album is completely recorded in a studio.

I'm a little surprised I didn't hear more about this when Salvation's Tide Is Rising dropped. This was a potential game-changer here. The last of the three major worship music camps (the other two are Bethel and Hillsong, by the way) to have not released a studio album is finally doing so. The question is, does this change work as well as it has worked for Bethel with Tides or Hillsong UNITED with Zion and Empires?

I'll say one thing: this is a major stylistic change for Passion's music. They've traded in their live feel for a grand sense of space on most of their tracks that I was a little surprised about. It reminds me a little bit of Zion in that respect, but it's not nearly as artistically minded in its composition. Knowing me, you would think that I would not appreciate artistic simplicity in any kind of music.

Here's the thing, though: Salvation's Tide is not about making the most artistic music the church can possibly make. It's about providing church worship leaders with new music while also appealing to fans of music in general. Looking at this through that perspective gives it much more validity. I wouldn't even go so far as saying that this is simply made music. It's more restrained than anything. There is an increased focus on the artistic side of the music, but it doesn't make these songs nearly as impossible to play live as some of my favorite worship artists (*cough*Kings Kaleidoscope*cough*) do.

In particular, I applaud the continued musical innovation and increased lyrical depth of artists not named David Crowder or Chris Tomlin (I'll get to them later). Kristian Stanfill's bookends of the title track and a cover of Housefires' "Good Good Father" show a continued focus from Passion on taking their sound to new (mostly electronic) places while also adding pound upon pound of lyrical depth. "Remember," led by Brett Younker and Melodie Malone, has some incredibly simple yet earnest lyrics about the empty tomb that are augmented well by these more recent Passion additions' voices and anthemic yet synthy musical stylings. Malone's solo song "Simple Pursuit" shows her mad vocal chops that come close to the dynamic power of Taya Smith and Jenn Johnson, as well as the anthemic feel of Salvation's Tide as a whole. Even Matt Redman's "I Turn to Christ" shows signs of innovation from a long mainstay of the industry.

As for Crowder and Tomlin, they represent completely opposite ends of the spectrum of the "mainstream" worship movement and continue to do so here. My least favorite track on Salvation's Tide is Tomlin's lone track "God and God Alone." It's not a bad song, but it lacks any of the significant lyrical depth or musical innovation that most of the rest of the album contains, making it stick out like a sore thumb. On the contrary, Crowder's songs don't stand out as drastically superior to the others, mostly because they begin to catch up with his level of musical innovation and singable yet poignant lyrics. This actually makes his songs fit better with the others, as even though I always looked forward to his songs on Passion albums I knew that they didn't quite fit with the rest of the album all that well. "My Victory" has a very pleasant blend of accessible songwriting and musical prowess, while "All We Sinners" is one of the biggest album-stoppers I've ever heard. It's gospel/blues feel is melded perfectly with the incredibly straightforward message of redemption to create the album's best moments and some of the best moments of any Passion album to date.

Salvation's Tide is definitely my favorite Passion album to listen to to date. The fact that it's not live is a big plus for me, but what really does it is the increased musical innovation that doesn't come at the price of congregational singability. There's definitely some poorer songs that stick out, but on the whole this is a marked improvement over their last few releases. This might not be Louie Giglio's crew's best release, but it's up there.

My rating: 3.5/5
Standout tracks: "My Victory," "Remember," "Simple Pursuit," "Your Grace Amazes Me," "All We Sinners"