Reviewed by Paul S Ganney

Despite a couple of tracks having "Dance" in brackets after their names, this is overall a gentle CD, released last year. The beats are there, but very much in the background: more a 3am wind-down than a 10pm wind-up, with occasional pop blasts. Toronto-based McKay has enjoyed chart success in the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart (four times, no less). Vocally he's gentle, too, with a style somewhere between Tears For Fears and Christopher Cross but mostly Robbie Williams / later Take That ("Without Your Love" is so much in this vein that I had to check that the outro vocal wasn't by Robbie). Lyrically he's less a commentator on faith and more a commentator on life and relationships (eg, "Connected", all about how we are all connected and yet not really so, missing out on the person we might want to sit and watch the world go by with; "What Might Have Been" about how you can't look back on what might have been). The album dips slightly at "Someone (Dance)" which may have benefitted from the removal of the keyboard riff and it's slightly OTT to have three different versions of "Destiny", a good song, but not the best on the CD. That honour goes to "More Than A Memory".

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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