Reviewed by Paul Poulton

Two albums here, really belonging to the slice of time from which they were created: mid to late '90s. They capture the styles that were popular in those days. Electric pianos using substitute jazz chords, ultra-clean guitar licks, electric acoustic guitar played using its unforgiving staccato finger picking (made popular by the boy band songs of the day) and sliding synth notes that haunt around the place in the backdrop of songs. There is also, of course, CeCe's soft voice which is the finely crafted needle work linking all these elements into a cohesive whole. The family Winans seem to have, (whenever I've seen them) a hankering after hymns, the first CD, 1995's 'Alone In His Presence', has some fairly well known hymns, which fit into the steady worshipful flow of the songs. The production team has a pretty good bash at evoking some passion and feeling into songs that could easily rule themselves out of the field of play simply because of their age. Check out "I Surrender All", it's good. I struggled with the walking jazz bass of "Blessed Assurance", too corny by a couple of miles, even some of the singing is slightly dodgy, naaaaa! This first CD also has three additional videos of concert footage, not too much to write home about there though. The second CD, 1998's 'Everlasting Love', is the more upbeat affair of the two.

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