Reviewed by Tony Cummings

Of course, Darlene is best known as the voice of Hillsong and author of worldwide worship standard "Shout To The Lord". Her solo album 'Change Your World' from 2006 highlights her individual talents as singer/songwriter, perhaps more than is possible on her church's regular worship releases. She has a hand in penning every track here apart from a capable if unnecessary run-through of Michael W Smith's "Agnus Dei". Her powerful voice, appropriately, is front and centre throughout these (as Darlene puts it) personal rather than congregational worship tunes, and producer David Holmes makes sure that listeners who only know Ms Zschech through her "day job" are not alienated, by keeping the overall sound in general Hillsongs territory. The DVD content (hence the DualDisc tag) is comparatively sparse and disappointing. The cover listing prepares fans to enjoy a video of the title track and two other items: "In The Studio" and "Missions Documentary" - in fact the latter are halves of the same brief (10 minutes, if that) item. At first we get some very ordinary footage of the recording process, over which an interviewed Darlene offers unsurprising information like (I paraphrase) "I write a lot of songs," "I enjoy being with my family and friends" and "writing and recording an album takes time." Slightly better is a second segment including home movie footage of a trip that the Zschech family took to central Africa, and how the needs of its people overwhelmed her existing worldview and inspired the title track: "I live to change your world/How you've changed my world," sings Darlene to the needy children of the earth, a sentiment visualised in the aforementioned video. Fans will have to judge for themselves whether the addition of this so-so music clip and a short "documentary" justify a separate (second?) purchase of this CD, but clearly the phenomenon of "double dipping", which is becoming the DVD movie industry norm, is not alien to CCM.

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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