Reviewed by Philip Crawley

When does a collection of 15 previously released songs move from being slickly produced listening for Christians to being a valuable resource of new worship songs for the Church? I'm not sure I know, but I suspect that this CD only manages it some of the time. Ironically the Hosanna album that I'm sure most people remember most fondly is Ron Kenoly's 'Lift Him Up' which very definitely falls into the first category. This isn't a bad thing, but these compilations do have pretensions to the latter and often fail to deliver solid songs that a congregation could sing (let alone worship group arrange for a small band). Having said that we do have a couple of good praise numbers here - the opener is "New Song Arising" featuring Darrell Evans which is good guitar-based rock which I could well imagine singing on Sunday morning. Kent Henry (I urge you to check out his Psalms recordings from the early '90s) is here with a couple of slower choir-backed songs, and Graham Kendrick's track (taken from 'No More Walls' from a couple of years back) are all the kind of songs that stick in your head. However, these are the exceptions, and I found most of this CD to be too over-produced with songs that should have been stronger for those arrangements.

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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