My Own Little World

John Mark McMillan is the most famous guy you've never heard of in Christian music. Since penning the modern classic "How He Loves," he has largely lived in the small-but-active indie sector of Christian music, working his way from alternative rock on his debut The Song inside the Sounds of Breaking Down  all the way to folk-tinged indie on his last effort Borderland . That last one made me fall in love with the man's writing style and his ability to weave seamlessly between complexity and simplicity while never losing lyrical meaning (if you want an example, go listen to "Future/Past"). Because of Borderland , I preordered Mercury & Lightning  in January. Yes, that's over seven months ago. I have been sitting on pins and needles ever since, waiting to hear how McMillan would continue his stellar career. From where he was on his last project, Mercury & Lightning  feels like a natural progression musically. McMillan continues on his Springst...

Kings Kaleidoscope is literally (in Chris Traeger's voice) the best thing that ever happened to my taste in music. They partially restored my faith in Christian music's ability to be good (not an easy thing to do for me). Their only two full-length albums have gotten perfect scores from me, and one of them is even in my top 5 albums of all time. Some people would argue I have a massive bias towards them and their music. To a point, I agree: I am biased towards Kings Kaleidoscope's material. Here's the thing, though: it's actually that good.  More so than almost any other artist in Christian music, they blend musical ingenuity with superb songwriting and lyricism. Their debut flipped the switch on a new generation of worship music, while their sophomore effort progressed their sound into a relatively sparser palette while also shifting their aim from worship music to music for the Christian life. Continuing their near-perfect catalog is their latest release, Th...

Over the past several years, I've really grown to love Hillsong United. Their 2013 and 2015 releases, Zion  and Empires , respectively, have made me regain hope for the worship music industry, proving that mainstream worship music can actually be well-written and musically conscious. That being said, I was really looking forward to whatever they did next and was surprised when they announced Wonder  less than a month ago for release this weekend. The title track was so ridiculously infectious that, despite some slightly vague lyrics, I couldn't help but put it on repeat as I waited for the other tracks to be released. I don't know if it was my wild anticipation or my high expectations, but Wonder  actually lacks a little bit of enchantment now that I've listened to it in its entirety a couple of times. United has done a great job over the past couple of years of carefully cultivating a specific sound for each of their releases, with Zion  being extremely energe...

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...

The City Harmonic has become known as one of the few links between the truly alternative and the truly mainstream strands of worship music, sounding familiar enough to capture the hearts of both while also bringing a unique piano-based touch to their music. When they announced a new project for this fall, I was so excited to listen to it. This is one of my favorite bands in all of Christian music because they are so easy to listen to and become swept up into the music, even if it isn't the most inventive thing in the world. However, I've got some bad news: The City Harmonic's new album We Are  is a definite regress for the band. With We Are , the band tries to turn every song into a big anthem, and it just doesn't work. It feels like they tried to give every single track power and instead took the whole album's power away. Granted, the opening track "We Are One" works as a big, bombastic anthem, but that's because it opens the album. The anthem...

Very few bands have struck me the way Ghost Ship did with their debut The Good King . The production was minimalist to a fault, their Americana stylings meshed in a weird but good way with their indie rock base, and the lyrics struck me as oddly theologically rooted. I liked, but couldn't love. Now, two years after their debut, Ghost Ship is back to prove that their debut's success wasn't a fluke with their sophomore effort, Costly . Right away, I can tell that the production quality has greatly improved. While I usually consider this a flaw for folksier music like this, for Ghost Ship it works because of their odd style mash-up of indie rock and Americana. I felt like The Good King  was very weighted throughout because of its hollow production that focused my ears on the lyrics too much. On Costly , not only is the sound blended better, but it's changed quite a bit as well. It's progressed from an indie rock sound with occasional folk elements to something re...

Today, I got an interesting announcement in my inbox. I subscribe to Phil Joel's email newsletter that updates me on all things in his music. I really like him because of his tenure with the Newsboys (he is best known for singing the verses on "Entertaining Angels"), but I've been curious to know what he's up to as of late. I found out for the first time today that he has started a new worship project called  Zealand Worship . I immediately went to their website and looked for any music they had made available. Upon listening to the four tracks there, I decided to initiate a new section for my blog: New Artist Spotlight. I'll be doing these infrequently to highlight new artists, Christian and otherwise, that I find particularly appealing and intriguing. Zealand Worship fits this bill pretty well. They have a sound rooted in the mid-2000s "we want to sound like U2 but not make it too obvious" worship music but with a slight electronic edge to it. ...

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 ...

This review has taken me a long time to be able to write. Looking back I can find only one reason for this. This is the only time I have ever guessed about an album and been dead wrong. I'm glad I was wrong, too. As you can see from my past two posts, I don't have the most welcoming view of Hillsong Live (now Hillsong Worship). To me, it felt like they made re-recordings of the same album every year, slightly changing the instrumentation in the process. Lyrically, this album does not differ greatly from previous Hillsong albums. For the most part, the album's lyrics focus on Christ and His sacrifice and how His Name is the Name above all other names. This is essential for a worship album, as the focus needs to be on God and not those worshiping Him. "Broken Vessels (Amazing Grace)" is a prime example of this. Besides the fact that it uses the lyrics to the hymn's first verse in an extremely clever way, it references the fact that we are broken people t...

As my few regular readers will note, I have started to preface my music reviews with a little background on my thoughts going into my listening of an album. In preparation for my review of Hillsong Worship's (formerly Hillsong Live) upcoming album No Other Name , I felt that I needed to elaborate on my thoughts surrounding the Hillsong brand due to some past comments I have made about their music. This is the first part of a two-part series on this topic. Hillsong is probably one of the most famous names in Christian music, but most casual listeners will not realize that Hillsong is actually the name of a megachurch in Sydney, Australia, that identifies with the Pentecostal tradition. Within the church, there are several different bands that all serve different purposes. For this first writing, I will limit them to Live (the main worship team) and United (the youth band). There are and were many more, but these are the only two that have stood the test of time and stayed releva...