Reviewed by Ian Hayter

Clark Byron began singing and playing in his native New York State in 1976 and in recent years has been voted Kansas City Christian Music Songwriter Of The Year and Male Vocalist Of The Year. He has a nice enough voice and his songs are well crafted, but I don’t know what the competition’s like in Kansas City. This album, Clark’s first since his 1997 offering ‘Precious Cargo’, took me back to the early ‘70s - the music and the lyrics are much as you would have found on some of the early Key label records, only here the production is considerably better. What I’m trying to say is that this is a well produced set of songs, but the songs themselves are not really anything special. The lyrical content is full of the language of Zion - indeed, one track is called “The Road To Zion” - and the tunes are memorable only in the “I wish I could get that tune out of my head” kind of way. There are one or two tracks which stand out from the rest - “Come Let Us Reveal Him” has some great acoustic guitar work on it and “Tidings Of Joy” has a rather pleasant string arrangement bubbling along in the background - but there’s nothing here to make this album stand out from thousands of others. Mr Byron is joined by his wife Dana on harmonies and the two obviously work well together, but with 10 tracks (half of which are written by the singer) coming in at only just over 34 minutes, this is not really an album I’d recommend.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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