My Own Little World

A few months ago, a British worship artist by the name of Ian Yates got in contact with me, asking me to review his upcoming album. I jumped at the chance to get a bit of an early look at a (at least in the United States) relatively unknown artist while also getting to form a bit of a relationship directly with people actually making their own music. I went and listened to all of Ian's back catalog to make sure I had a proper perspective on this new album. To be honest, I'm not really a huge fan of a whole lot of his older stuff, as it fits into the modern worship box way too snugly. There was definitely some evident improvement as I went from album to album, but on the whole it's by the books worship music. I didn't think his material was bad; it just didn't grab me in any meaningful way. That being said, Ian's new project Awaken to Love  has a lot more to offer than his prior work. It's got some solid lyricism and musical composition that are just in...

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 finall...