My Own Little World

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...

First of all, before I start this review, I want to commend Chris and his team for continuing to make great Sunday morning worship music for the masses. Truly, I do. It is hard to write this many songs and keep them worshipful without being entirely flippant in a church service. So, Mr. Tomlin, I thank you, as a fellow worship leader, for giving all this music to be at the church's disposal. However, I'm not reviewing a collection of songs for a worship service. I'm reviewing an album. That is the unfortunate consequence of being an avid music fan: as much as you want to like something, you sometimes just can't. Chris has a tendency to write music that doesn't always work in a studio recording, and that trend sadly continues on Love Ran Red . As a whole, the album fails to ever truly capture my full attention for very long. There are many good moments, but they fail to make a good album on the whole. Thankfully, these good moments aren't hard to come by ...