Reviewed by Andy Cooper

This is Ellen M Wilson's debut album, and consists of 10 psalms and liturgical songs mostly sung in the Hebrew language. Ellen is a vocal lecturer at the University of Texas, El Paso, so obviously knows a thing or two about singing unusually pronounced words! It's quite rare for a Messianic album to have so much Hebrew content, and thankfully some English translation is provided in the sleevenotes. This is important, because a song needs to be extra special to transcend a language barrier, to carry its meaning and emotion to an audience of such a different culture. Sadly, they often miss the mark here. The melodies of songs such as "Shir HaMa-alot" (the title track) and "Mah Gadlu" ("How Great") are so nursery-rhyme like in their simplicity that they quickly become tiresome and do the rich lyrical content an injustice. And Ellen's vocals, though technically very proficient, lack character and personality. At least this is partly made up for by the tasteful flute and soprano sax solos by Paul Anderson and some smooth production from Scott Leader.

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